Day 21: Sunlight

Another fictitious time stamp.  Another tough story to write.  And again I run up against limitations in my will and my time.

Sunlight

Lucas stepped into the bus, the gun heavy in his bag. He shoved the fare card into the reader by the driver. The reader sucked the card in and spit it back out again. Lucas took his seat.

Two chunky guys sat in the back of the bus. Lucas couldn't help but listen to their conversation.

“Yeah, my boss cut my bonus,” the first guy said. The first guy was a little bit heavy, wore a green polo shirt and tan slacks. His dark brown hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. Lucas could see this guy sitting in a chair in the kitchen with his mother giving him a bowl cut before he put on his polo shirt over the t-shirt with the scraps of hair on it. Then the guy went to work making copies.

“So he screwed you over,” the second guy said. The second guy was heavier, wore a t-shirt and shorts, looked like he was about eighteen years old, and had medium-length hair that curved away from his face at its tips. So this guy went to Great Clips in the suburbs and said “business in front, party in the back,” half-ironically because he didn't want to say “give me a mullet.”

“Well, he took a hit on this too. He has to sell his house in New Jersey,” Bowl Cut said.

Sloppy Mullet said, “oh, so he really screwed up.”

“He has, like, two houses. The country house, up in Connecticut, is everything you want from a country house. Lots of space, amazing views. But anyhow, he personally guaranteed the loans on the company, and then things went pfft.”

“He should have done his due diligence.”

Lucas wondered why Sloppy Mullet was using phrases like “due diligence” if he was eighteen. Maybe he wasn't eighteen. But why did he have such a crappy hair cut?

“He did his due diligence,” Bowl Cut was saying, “but this was 2007 and everybody expected the market to keep going up.”

“So he really screwed up,” said Sloppy Mullet.

“Well, he's going to have to sell his house in Jersey. He's living with his mother.”

“So he's fucked.”

“He's going to have to pay about five hundred thousand of his own money. But his place in New Jersey is still worth about a million, so..”

“He screwed you over.”

“Well, I don't get as big a bonus,” said Bowl Cut.

A bonus! Lucas got it the second time he heard the word. These slobs worked for some kind of high tech company or Wall Street bullshit. At least, Bowl Cut did. No telling why he hung out with this other loser.

“He cut your bonus? That's bullshit,” said Sloppy Mullet.

“Well, I don't like it, of course.”

And it was Lucas' stop. He got off.

Shaw didn't want him to bring a gun. Shaw said why take the risk, Bloomberg wants to make it a crime to carry a handgun if you are drunk, what do you think that means if you're carrying when you commit a felony B&E?

Lucas shifted the bag to his other shoulder. It wasn't really that heavy but he wanted to even his shoulders out so he didn't end up walking crooked when he turned fifty.

He walked up the street. Pretty neighborhood. Trees arched out over the bluestone sidewalk. Sun shone through the trees. Lots of black-painted iron railings. Wish there was a bus up the cross street.

Lucas felt a little like taking a crap, or eating a candy bar. Something to relieve his anxiety. If he could find something sweet to eat, that would settle his gut. Maybe make him feel better.

Lucas took care not to stare at the flicker of light coming through the trees. That would be work but it would be the wrong way to feel better.

On the corner there was a store. He grabbed a Snickers and paid for it. He ate while he walked.

This could go any kind of ways. Shaw said it was easy, go in, grab the papers, no one would be there, make it look like guys broke in looking for computers and expensive stuff and couldn't find anything. Then get out. Easy. But Lucas knew it could go any kind of ways.

He threw the used up Snickers wrapper on the sidewalk. And got about five feet before he heard his Mom's voice in his head. She didn't even have to say words. He stopped, and some guy in chinos and a sweater ran into him.

“What the hell, man!” The guy didn't even say it in a mean way, just like Lucas had surprised him.

Lucas mumbled sorry and stepped around the guy and picked up the Snickers wrapper. Then he walked to the corner, balling it up in his hand. Then he threw the wrapper into the wire basket on the corner.

He got to the place where Shaw said to meet. No Shaw. Lucas leaned against the neat line of bricks that went all the way up the side of the building. Looking down the street while the fingers of one hand felt the rough surface of the bricks and the fingers of the other hand slipped inside the bag and felt the cool metal frame of the gun.

His stomach felt better but only a little bit. If he didn't need the money Lucas would be running down the street right now, all the way back to his Grandma's apartment where he would sit on the sofa and get high, just a little bit high, and watch Rockford Files with Andre.

But Lucas didn't have the heart to sell on the corner and he didn't have the right way of talking to sell in a store. And he wanted to take Sharisse Harris out to Masa. Lucas wasn't sure he would like to eat at Masa, but Sharisse Harris wouldn't even look at a scrawny little white boy like him if he didn't have the ways and means to take her there.

Where was Shaw? Lucas looked up and down the street trying to look like he wasn't looking up and down the street. He felt his stomach trying to sit outside his body. He willed it to jump back in and stop playing around.

The gun came from his father's house, in Connecticut. Lucas' father didn't know he had it. Lucas' father didn't even know that he had visited last week. Lucas didn't even have to break into the house, because he remembered that his dad kept the gun in the garage. After not seeing his dad for five years, Lucas was glad that he'd remembered right.

The sounds of the street had moved away from him. Like a pane of glass had come down between him and the street. His face tingled a bit. Lucas moved his head around, trying to hear better.

“Hey.” Shaw stood in front of him, looking down the street as if he, Shaw, were just talking to himself.

The pane of glass evaporated. The world sounded normal again.

Lucas looked the other way down the street and said “hey” back. They weren't supposed to know each other.

Shaw pressed the buzzer for the doctor's office on the first floor. They buzzed him in without even asking for his name.

After five minutes, Lucas walked up to the door and pushed the button for the doctor's office on the sixth floor. The buzzer sounded, the door went clunk, and Lucas went in.

No cameras in the ground-floor hallway, just faded industrial carpet and rub marks along the walls. A dying plant by the elevator. The hallway smelled of old people and dentist's office.

Lucas could see the car arrive through the porthole in the elevator door. He pulled the door open, got in, and pressed six. The door slid shut, and the old people smell got stronger.

The real estate office took up the entire sixth floor. Lucas could see that Shaw had already turned on the lights. For some reason, this made him breathe a little easier.

He walked into the office. Sun spilled through the trees outside the windows. Expensive-looking art on the walls. A big oak desk in front of the door. The desk was very clean.

“Oh, hello,” said the man behind the desk.

Shaw stood behind the man behind the desk. He said, “Hey, Lukey. How are you?”

Lucas stood still. Shaw looked at the bag over Lucas' shoulder, and raised his eyebrows. Lucas stared back. Shaw repeated the gesture, and Lucas gave an involuntary half-nod as he felt his stomach sitting outside his body again.

“Lukey, why don't you show Mr. Ellis what you brought? I know I told you not to bring it, but that was because I didn't expect Mr. Ellis to be here. Mr. Ellis doesn't understand how important our business is. So go ahead, show him.”

Shaw spoke nicely but it sounded like a command.

Lucas slipped his hand inside the bag and felt the cool metal frame of the gun.

Shaw looked at him encouragingly.

This is it, thought Lucas. This is really going down.

Lucas curled his fingers around the grip of the gun, laying his trigger finger alongside the barrel like his father had taught him. He slid it out of the bag.

The man's eyes widened, just a little bit. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. I thought that shit only happened in movies, Lucas thought. Then Lucas felt a trickle down his own back.

And then he heard his Mom's voice in his head again, and Lucas thought I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this, I don't, I don't.

Shaw stood next to Lucas now, and slid the gun from his hands. This has gotten way out of control, Lucas thought.

The sun sparkled outside the window, and Lucas knew what to do. He stared at it. He stared at it until the pane of glass came down over the world, and his stomach sat outside him, and everything went very far away.

Lucas could just hear Ellis beginning to shout before he lost himself in the seizure.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 20: Mother

Here is a revised draft.  For the first time, I'm not going to publish a finished story.   I need to continue this process in a way that accommodates healthy life choices.  Like sleeping more than five hours a night.

Mother

Mother was warm. Mother was tough. Mother hummed with maternal care. Mother was wide. Mother was long. Mother hurtled through space at three times the speed of light.

At least, she did on a good day.

In the course of seven years she would travel from the shipyards of Earth to the deeper outskirts of the the Asimov system, where she would shimmer into conventional space. There she would commence braking maneuvers and go into orbit around Steven's Haven.

Lawrence Udero burrowed deeper into the blankets of his cot. The pressure tank ping'ed again and he snorted in frustration. Another ping. He moaned, sat up, and swung his feet over the edge of his cot. The floor chilled his feet when they touched it, and he curled his toes up as he staggered over to the bleed panel.

Fifth day on. Paco Tableman squinted into the metaform display, watching synthetic health trends for the primary drive packs. His brain itched and nothing he saw at made sense any more. He switched to the power distribution graph of the main drive antenna, looked at the side lobes. There was still only 10dB of difference between the side lobes and the main. It should be 40dB.

Mother was a third generation translight ship, and the first designed for colonization of another planet in the Goldilocks zone. She carried a thousand colonists. She swam through the undulating tunnels of hyperspace, power from an atomic plant feeding the drive antenna that hauled her forward. As she passed by the gravitational dimples made by stars and planets, the frequency and beam width of the drive antenna required constant adjustment. And so the geometry of that antenna must constantly change, too.

Paco's job was to coax a lump of software into regularly adjusting the antenna geometry so that Mother wasn't throwing away the large but finite capacity of her atomic pile.

It gave Paco headaches to bully the software into doing the right thing, and sometimes he had a go at trimming things by hand. His section chief fussed, but Paco was good.

Five days into an all-hands emergency, and Paco wasn't so good anymore. And for some reason all the heuristics in the software had gone lazy and the ship's drive antenna was running only 1% as efficiently as it normally did.

Mother was practically standing still, and might slip into conventional space at any moment.

This was not a good day.

Lawrence was awake now. The bleed panel's metaform display showed healthy greens on all the zone taps. His bedding lay behind him, inviting and warm. But Lawrence's eyes were fixed on the screen of his personal tab, and the raucously laughing girls who appeared on it, diving into a rec pool in ones and twos, swimming to the “shore,” climbing out, falling on top of one other in a tangle on the soft synthetic beach at the water's edge. He snagged a blanket from the top of the pile on his cot and wrapped it around him, settling in for the hour it would take him to feel sleepy again.

Mother's actual rec pool, all of six meters long, had been filled with vermiculite and manure and planted with cannabis sativa. Lawrence Udero didn't use it. Paco Tableman didn't use it, either. But they both knew people who did.

It wasn't until a couple of years into Mother's flight plan that certain things which had been hidden away began to surface. Everyone who has been in charge of a large organization, from a high-school principal upwards, can feel when something has begun to go wrong. But to determine the exact cause can take longer. To fix it, sometimes much longer. How long depends upon the nature of the crisis and the perspicacity of the executive.

Karyl Vacha was a very smart man. He had a couple of advanced degrees, one in drive engineering and another in planetary science, and he had been president of his class at West Point. But after his five obligatory years in the service, he had left for years of graduate training, driven by a hunger to know anything he might need to know.

He circled back to the executive suite eventually. He spent a long enough time there in terrestrial life that no one could question his qualifications to administer the civilian population of a translight ship for a seven year voyage. But he became executive of the entire ship when the ship's original exec died of cerebral artery dissection. That happened six months after launch.

Karyl Vacha was a very smart man, but he wasn't smart enough to detect the first signs of what an earlier generation would have called moral turpitude. Now, with two hundred recaltritants holed up in the recreation wing of the ship and a complicated series of translight shifts to oversee, Karyl was in over his head.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 19: Lost It

Another fictional time stamp.  I finished at 3:06am.  I take the weekend off to go to a wedding and I forget how hard it is to write anymore.  Poor me.

Lost It

On Saturday at 2pm, Juleen Smith finished sorting her clean dishes into the cupboards, then pulled out some pre-moistened sanitizing tissues with which she sanitized the table top.

Her house was quiet. She got uneasy. Her son was home, and when her son was home and the house was quiet, she got uneasy, even though he had always been a quiet child. So she twisted the knob of and gingerly pressed her shoulder against the bathroom door.

And traumatized the boy, startled him while he's making out with glossy pictures from some magazine, a sloe-eyed Japanese girl with velvet roundy bits. She was a queen, the girl depicted, a ruler of the night, some daft synthesis of Occident and Orient, with refolded eyes and tortured syntax transcribed in a “Luv iT!/as if” text box at the bottom of the page.

Disgusting.

Not his fault. It wasn't young Robin's fault. He was lost like all of us. What could he do?

But Juleen Smith oogha-ed and shrieked at her son's disgraceful conduct, private though it may have been meant to be. She didn't have the sense to decode all the culture-jacking swimming under the surface of the cheap magazine gloss, nor had she the the delicacy to breathe deeply, wait a day, and sit the young man down for a Talk. She just gave throat to the horrible wrongness of it all. Briefly, with a few sobs and fewer words.

They each retreated to their respective boudoirs.

Juleen Smith had a chenille bedspread, and on the walls a series of author's pictures: Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Emily Matthews. She had papered her walls with a floral print, and tacked yellow-painted injection-molded cornice at the tops of those walls. The ceilings were a shade of white demurely approaching the color of straw.

Robin Smith had a map of Tsim Sha Tsui and delicate line drawings of predatory birds on his walls, which were the hue of a robin's egg. A bobble-headed doll of the lead singer from The Cure on his bureau from IKEA. The bobble-headed doll had wings attached. Robin had attached the wings as a sort of private joke. Robin liked birds, including his namesake, and its predators, including the Cooper's Hawk. He listened to all of the music made by musicians who imitated Brian Eno. He also dug the Scissor Sisters and Shonen Knife. But he tried not to limit himself.

Juleen Smith really, really, really did not understand her son, and she would have been surprised to be told how similar they in fact were.

Robin Smith was painfully aware of how similar in fact they were, and took pains to emphasize the differences.

One of the reasons that Robin liked the Cooper's Hawk so much was that it had a severe, blocky head, and the feathers on the back of its head sometimes stuck out. Robin felt that this could describe him, especially when he put that hard sticky styling pomade in his hair, making the feathers on the back of his head stick out. In his mind this helped to distinguish him from his mother, who he felt was timid, round, and soft.

One hour later. Robin slipped out the back door, the click and buzz of the Cocteau Twins rattling his eardrums.

He took a couple of public transit to a storefront titled Money Next Week, grabbed a latte and parked himself on a couch in the back, cocooned in threadbare velvet and the entirety of some recent Tangerine Dream album. This is how he killed an hour and a half.

Juleen Smith wrote in her journal.

It is unfair of me to complain. He gets good marks in school. He is sensitive and kind, even if he broods too much. But I can not help feeling hurt by his actions this afternoon. I have done so much to give him a space of his own, to nurture in him his innate talents. Why must he abuse himself?

After she wrote these words, Juleen pulled down a slim volume of poetry by a lady poet and read, pulling into herself.

A boy sat down next to Robin. Robin drew into the corner of the sofa, but the boy, who had blue eyes and very dark hair and pale skin, started talking to Robin, which started Robin's heart beating very fast for no good reason at all.

Juleen wrote up Monday's lesson plan.

The boy's fingers brushed Robin's hand like it was an accident.

Juleen ironed tea towels

Robin talked about the Cooper's Hawk, and the boy smiled.

And then, a bit later:

Juleen washed her face, brushed her teeth, and went to bed.

Robin jammed his cheek up against the cool smeary chrome of the rail on the back of the slick molded seat on the number 5 bus and stared absently at the tired woman two rows back. She was asleep and didn't see him or his hopeful, giddy, anxious smile.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 17: What Kenny Saw

What Kenny Saw

On the car trip between Huntington and Taylorsville, this is what Kenny saw:

His front door, painted green, with the Sesame Street sticker on it.

The driveway, the concrete cracked and spalling, The sidewalk, with faded hopscotch boards chalked onto it by Karen. Karen's purple tricycle, which Dad got out and moved to the back yard.

The Hopworth and Lincoln street signs at the end of their street. Kenny lived on Hopworth. He lived on Hopworth all his life.

Mr. Kryzboski's front yard. Not allowed to run across it. Pauly Fischer running across it. Karen's stupid head as Kenny tried to see if Mrs. Kryzboski was looking out from behind the curtain while Pauly Fischer ran across the yard.

Mead Street. A dump truck. A station wagon with a dog in the back. A city bus. The pink and white house. Karen yelling "pink an' white house!"

The rampy-ramp that spirals down. Big semi tractor trucks. Chickens' beaks poking out of crates. A silver tanker truck. Three motorcycles.

Billboard signs for food. For the circus! For a man with a scowling face and long words.

Five motorcycles. A boat on a trailer.

A train. The engine. Orange cones. Orange road signs. Other cars. The caboose.

Trees.

Wheat fields.

Power lines.

McDonalds. McDonalds. McDonalds!

Gas station. Gas station restroom. Peeling paint. Concrete floor. Cracked sink with paint spattered on it. Mop bucket. Mop.

The ceiling of the car. Lots of tiny holes in the ceiling of the car.

Karen asleep, drooling.

Stuckey's.

Six airplanes.

Rampdyramp. Traffic lights. More McDonalds.

Trees. Winding streets. Golf carts.

A driveway painted green.

Grandma and Poppa Spencer's house. Grandma. The ticky clock above the fireplace. Green carpet that smells funny. The dish of candies on the little table next to the sofa that is covered in clear plastic. The kitchen. A pot of chili beef stew. A pie. Three bananas.

The back door. The back porch. The clothesline with three aprons hanging limply.

A puppy!

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 16: All This Sh*t Has Been Done Before

I had half of this written at 11:30pm.  But finishing it took another ninety minutes.

All This Sh*t Has Been Done Before

The best dream. Chasing after my muse, Jennifer: flowing dress, lustrous golden hair. And an ever ready action-pot.

Jennifer replenish me. Get her to tell me all her secrets so I can steal them and sell them as my own. Hey, we all gotta get through this somehow.

Jennifer holds me in her arms, her breasts warm and soft, her smell sweet. The skies are clear, a gentle breeze blows, and she says my name over and over, softly, like the rain.

Jennifer forgives me!

Okay, dream over.

Wake up. Get out of bed. Et cetera.

Subway.

Exit subway, walk down street, enter elevator.

In the elevator there is that passive aggro chick, I think her name is Sandra. While inside the elevator, Sandra stands right in front of the door even if she is going to the twenty-third floor. Lots of people gonna get off before her, push by, probably think their own passive aggro thoughts. Sandra don't care.

Deal with her by (1) freakin' ignoring her and (2) sweating into my cuffs.

Onto floor 12. Make it to the desk. Rack my briefcase on the shelf above--next to Advertising Age and JavaScript for Dummies--pin the coat by the "door" and dig in.

All this shit been done before, post-Soviet kitsch in red and black, or something super-cute, or the bare trickle of ironic text in an ironic font down the center of the ironic page. Completely getting on my nerves.

“Knock knock!” Who's there? Christ, I even think in clichés.

A nod from Richard as he saunters into my cubicle. He wants another below-the-radar, stencils and spray paint, amateurish yet beautiful website thing, selling Scripture or plasma screens or something good to eat.

Listen, I am really trying to put this together, I promise I am, nobody really wants to have a psychotic break, not ever, certainly not on Casual Friday, not as a response to a suggestion from your boss, no matter how trite his suggestion may be. So hitch up the thinking parts, make the feet touch the floor, hold back the 10am anti-Semitic tirade, the tired one. Wait for the Full Monty, with finger-mustache and goose-stepping.

(You know. When you are losing your shit, you are entitled to hate on any old class of people, as long as you commit fully. If you go halfway, with a witless opinion and the disclaimer that "I'm not racist but," you are just the sad and inevitable product of poor parental models.)

So I grab up my tired, empty wits, and opine freely on the nature of the market and how our audience has turned their eyeballs back to the print media, and you know what would be truly subversive? A straightforward, sincere display ad, with beautiful people in it.

But this is barely out of my mouth before I am thinking that I have heard someone say this before, and I am not sure whether it was me or a guy that I really despise.

Richard buys it, or he just wants to get out of range of the spittle flying from my lips, and tells me the idea is great. He backs out of my half-cube and iterates to the next action item on his list.

So now I have signed on to developing a campaign by the end of the day, Richard definitely heard me say that. So I gotta do something. So I hike it over to Production. They're right next to the bathrooms and I can watch the girls going in and out.

Can't figure out which one of these leggy 19 year old bitches I wanna make. Tempted just to grab the pull on any one of the shiny zippers down the back of the dresses, slither the chosen garment off the chosen body, and get busy.

Edit that shit Psychoflyboy. There're other flowers I gotta trim. Like getting my brain in order. Like making the big bucks. Like Janelle in Reception. She's sweet like spring on the Hudson. And her eyes are for me. I seen her makin' them.

First things first! Mock up some campaign text over glossy all-American sweethearts like Dick, Jane, or Insert Cream Puff Here. Campaign text like: "If you buy a hamburger in New Jersey, it will suck. So come to Brooklyn and eat at Sandra's. Nom nom nom!" That's the weak version, but I can rewrite it. Typeface is wayyy more important than text.

Five minutes at the keyboard, ten more with the mouse and the Wacom, scribble scribble snip, done. I am not losing it. I am totally in control. What I need, I think, is a vacation.

Now to the bathroom to douse my face in water. Gotta scrub the slaver off the chin. Pat my gleaming visage dry, gently, with the premium recycled hand towels. We sell these towels in print ads in all the tony Gay designer magazines. We got crates of this shit in the supply room. Nom nom nom.

Damn, I shouldn't joke to myself about sweating in my cuffs, they're soaked. Stupid splattery faucet. Grab some more of these super-absorbent Earth-friendly napkins, stuff them up my sleeves. Git 'er done.

Burst outta the washroom, a clean man, a man on a mission, lurch into Dan, my rival for Richard's love. Dan is the Sun King right now, the slimy bastard. He side-steps my headlong rush, gives me an awesome hipster hand shake, I can't remember how it's done I've done it so many times.

But I have business to do. The Sun King is a distraction. I will navigate around him as quickly as possible. Here is where I pay just enough attention to his words to return their force upon him, jiu-jitsu style.

“Heyhey, how's it going? I hear you have the Mumble account. Good luck--that's the top of the Wanted List. You got the Must Have. You have been Crowned, my brother!”

Except when he said Mumble, he said the name of the product, whatever it is. How did this bastard outfox me even when I am so primed and ready? He said I have the Top of the Wanted List! He knows something. Time to take decisive action.

Oh, and good call on the paper goods around my wrists. It's Niagra inside my shirt. My eyes have tears in the corners, I'm so full of pep and zoom.

I say some words. Words are a good way to explain this shit that we gotta do in this business. A good way to practice conversational martial arts. Little capsule of power-laden information shooting from my mouth into Dan-Dan's ears. Zing!

Placing in Dan's brain a surplus of information indicating in subtle ways three things: (1) I am performing an excellent job, (2) he better not think he's the Sun King any more, and (3) Janelle from Reception is mine.

A look of stupefaction creeps across Danny Boy's face. The boy is just a bit slow. I gotta explain this carefully.

I grasp with the thumb and forefinger of each hand a corresponding collar point of Dan's shirt. This gets me closer to his face so I can put the capsules of information into Dan's ear by the shortest route.

This is where I get blurry, because now I am standing on a desk, dividing up the cubicles into divisions. I explain that the girls have to get over on one side and the boys on another. That's so I can protect the girls from the bad sperm inside all of the other boys and give them my good sperm, which is like a vaccine, only it tastes like candy.

After this, I am in Dan's arms. He is holding me very tightly, as is Richard, and also Javier, who works security on the first floor. I am surprised that Javier is here. I feel that I am important.

Danny is telling me that it's going to be OK now. On this point, we are in agreement. Everything is OK, and it is going to be totally OK, and everything, everything, everything is going to be OK.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 15: Flyover

This feels like a chapter out of a book.  I don't know what book.

Flyover

He woke up sweating. Even the sheet was too heavy. The clock read 2:22 AM. The city outside the windows purred, distant but audible.

After a few minutes of feeling the tingle of exhaustion ebb and flow across his face, he slid off the bed, taking care not to wake his wife beside him. He walked out into the living room, skirted the coffee table, and then continued outside.

The bruise on his shin throbbed a bit as his bare feet struck the concrete of the balcony floor.

The orange and blue grid of the street lamps stretched out beneath him from below his feet to the shore. The rain had passed and he could see the causeway to the Markova spaceport outlined in green dashes.

The rain had passed but the heat had not. Inside the house it was still muggy. On the balcony, a gentle breeze brought the smell of jasmine and gardenias mixed with car exhaust and restaurant dumpsters.

He sat. He could feel the raindrops soak into his shorts.  The slick surface of the chair stuck to his skin. He wished he'd pulled on some pants.

He breathed, deeper. He felt the fatigue in the soreness of his chest and the faint tingling of his face. He listened to the city's purr.

He heard a rumble behind him. Distant at first, it slowly grew. As it grew, he began to hear other notes: the scream of the chase jets, the returning echo from the mountains across the bay.

A military transport, then. With escort. The first of the garrison they had been promised.

Soon Markova would change. Soldiers. More mining equipment. An influx of guest workers. Chaos, noise, pollution. Progress.

He hated it. The city was beautiful as it was. At twenty thousand people, it was more of a town. But Markova boasted a symphony; a couple of amateur theater companies; a small college. And a modest tax base provided by the modest mining operation on the other side of this ridge, ten kilometers inland.

What to do? The mainline precious metals had been exhausted, and deeper in, a vein of transuranic ore discovered. This ore was more dangerous to extract, and more valuable. Thus the guest workers. Thus the military.

Oh well. Not much to do about it.

The bruise on his shin refused to go away. It had been nearly a month. Going to see the doctor tomorrow. Probably nothing.

The military transport rumbled overhead and out over the bay. He watched it, absently rubbing the arm of the chair with his finger tips. It slid closer and closer to the water, at last lining up with the jetty runway. The escort craft peeled away from the transport and turned south.

The transport landed.

He waited for the noise to subside.

He sat a few minutes more, trying to memorize the quiet purr of the city.

The breeze shifted. Cooler, now. In fact he felt cold.

Back through the living room. Measured steps around the coffee table. Into the warm embrace of the bedroom.

Before he got back into bed, he stood and watched her. In the dimness he could not see much, but he remembered. Brown hair streaked with gray, pulled back. Tiny ears, close to the sides of her head. Thin nose. Small creases at the corner of her mouth. Arms and legs tucked in front of her. One foot always slightly pointed, usually the one on top. She slept on her side, facing away from him.

He got into bed, under the sheets. Got close to her, and felt her sides expanding and contracting, ever so slightly, as she breathed. He put his arm around her, and without waking she moved back into him. Still a bit cold. He pulled the comforter up over the sheet.

He thought about the city and how it soon would change.

He thought about the bruise, and the doctor tomorrow.

He felt her warmth against him.

He slept.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein

Day 14: Ricochet

I thought I would finish this earlier.  But once again, the story seized me and I didn't want to let it go until I had given it some sort of definite shape.  Now, to bed, as soon as possible.  N.B.: revised June 15th.

Richochet

Inside the back of the white ClockWatchers Moving and Storage truck, Duchamp Froissart bounced from wall to wall in the heat and darkness. Duchamp let go a few choice words, namely "Hell" and "Damn!" He was mightily vexed when he thought of his own carelessness.

Two hours had passed since Jake Taggart's goons had knocked him unconscious. Duchamp came to consciousness as the truck's engine rumbled to life. Instantly he glanced at the glowing radium dial of his watch. Four P.M. In only an hour more, something terrible would happen.

The truck heaved up, gravel crunching beneath the tires, and came to a rest. The engine shut off, doors slammed, and it was quiet.

Duchamp sat down to think.

He had been a fool to fall for the charms of Misty Kareem. She had been so demure in her ribbons and lace. Too demure. No one is an innocent orphan at the age of twenty four. Not in this dirty time.

Still, having lived fifty nine years himself, Duchamp found he was increasingly susceptible. To everything.

But: to escape this mobile prison, what should he do?

Duchamp felt his way around the floor, locating a few heavy blankets, some twists of twine, and, yes, a crowbar.

He felt resolve in his breast and the beginnings of a plan stirring in his brain.

Then, gravel crunching outside. Footsteps. The bolt clanked.

Minutes later, his assailants battered senseless and rolled up like a giant burrito, Duchamp alighted from the lift-gate of the truck, and looked at where he had arrived.

A lot full of white moving trucks. A slate-gray sky. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

Duchamp slid quietly through the ranks of trucks. Found the gate...locked.

Minutes later, he hurried down the sidewalk, without a scratch on him.

He located the house easily, set apart by the gingerbread trim of its upper floors. It looked nothing like the neighboring brownstones.

Minutes later, in the parlor, he faced Ivy De Sire.

"Last time I saw you, you had flaxen curls and a shy but wounded girlish giggle," he said. "No ribbons or lace now, I see."

Indeed, she was clad in leather from head to toe.

"Mister Froissart, I knew you for a fool the moment you raised that demitasse to your lips with your pinkie extended. I took you for everything and you deserved it. I left you with only one thing: your life. That was a regrettable omission, and it's only because I've had more interesting things to do. Now, it's time to make amends. Jake, finish him off."

Jake Taggart stepped from behind the chenille wall hanging, pistolero brandishéd. His neck muscles rippling and twitching beneath his evenly-tanned skin, he smiled.

"I am going to take pleasure in finishing you off, ya big noisy. You irritate my baby-doll," Jake said, raising his gleaming magnum .45.

Minutes later, the brains of the woman called Ivy De Sire, who was also known as Misty Kareem, gleamed from the wall. Jake Taggart, now bound with his own necktie, gaped incredulously.

"Why are her brains green? I did not think her brains would be green."

Duchamp Froissart turned to the muscle-bound crime lord and explained.

"She was a nasty creature from the planet Quaruz, in the Telephor Sector. She found an innocent victim, and inserted herself into the poor girl's brain pan. She ate her victim's memories and used the knowledge to insinuate herself into your inner circle. Once there, she could move closer and closer to you, become a trusted confidante, and manipulate you into becoming a powerful crime lord instead of the mobbed-up moving company foreman you once were. Also, she started a pastry company, baked a lot of cookies, and convinced you to marry her.”

“Damn!" said the duped strongman.

“Your wedding was this afternoon, was it not?"

“You know it was. I had to have my boys extract you from the proceedings because, as it happened, you were shouting in a rude and incoherent way. No hard feelings. You were just making it hard to hear the guy who was marrying us.”

“That was most embarrassing, and I do apologize. I have been on her trail for a long time. And unfortunately I did not what form she would take.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My mission was to find A'amatha Pewruz, a rogue jelly-creature traveling via ionic beam from the star system Blastoplam 32.”

“You mean a space creature?”

“Yes, a space creature. A space creature that took over the mind of Misty Kareem; that became Ivy De Sire; the space creature that set you up for a fall. I know that you planned to consummate your nuptials in this charming house. I knew that you had planned it for 5pm this evening. And I knew that at that moment of bliss, this space creature planned to leap from the brain pan of Ivy De Sire to the brain pan of Jake Taggart. You would cease to exist. And the evil, evil space creature would have in its hands considerable power to do harm.”

“Garn!” said Jake Taggart.

“Garn, indeed. As a further demonstration of her cunning, I must tell you that the cause of the noise I made at today's ceremony, the disturbing noises that came out of my mouth--those were the result of my own weakness. A foolish susceptibility to damsels in distress.”

Jake sized up the unassuming figure in front of him, trying to figure out what the little guy meant. Maybe the little guy would say if he asked him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that--despite everything I knew--I had fallen for her too, in her guise as adult orphan Misty Kareem.”

“Wait one minute, fellow. Are you saying that you had eyes for my baby-doll? That you was trying to edge in on my game?”

“A most regrettable outcome, I admit. But yes, I felt a fondness for her. A fondness which she had encouraged in me for her amusement and her financial gain. A fondness that fueled a burning physical desire to have, and to hold, and to do some other sorts of things as well. It was because of this impossible, foolish, disturbing fondness that, despite having discovered her evil nature, I grew terribly jealous at seeing her hand in hand with you before the minister, and I acted in manner that might be considered indiscreet.”

“That is one sort of nerve I do not like,” Jake said, as he burst from his bonds, and prepared to pulverize Duchamp's face by punching very hard with his fist.

Minutes later, Duchamp Froissart strolled down the street a few blocks away. He paused a moment to power down the Automatic Narrative Editor; no point in running down the battery now that the evil jelly-creature was dead and Jake was in the custody of the NYPD.

Minutes later, Duchamp Froissart sat in the the patrol vehicle of J'oto'moola To'ole, a law enforcement jelly-creature from the star-system Blastoplam 32 in the Telephor Sector. The jelly-creature spoke through a boxlike device that crackled and wheezed, but the words it formed were very clear.

“Mister Froissart,” said the wheezing box, “We appreciate your efforts to do good and fine things. But you must understand that we, as law-enforcement professionals, do not look kindly upon amateurs engaging in vigilante sorts of operations.”

Duchamp did not say anything. He looked at the toes of his shoes.

“So I'm going to ask you to return to me the time-space warping device you call the Narrative Editor. Please, don't pretend you haven't got it. They're all equipped with transponders. Our detectors aren't perfect, but they're pretty accurate over short distances.”

Duchamp reluctantly drew the gleaming widget from his breast pocket, and set it on the speaking machine.

“Also the police radio scanner.”

Duchamp put that on the speaking machine as well.

“Thank you. And have a good life.”

Days later, Duchamp sat in his favorite cafe, reading the newspaper and drinking a demitasse of coffee, his pinkie in the air.

A well kept woman of a certain age alighted in a chair not far from him. She had a little dog with her; the dog had a beautifully trimmed coat, and a pink bow in its hair. The woman smiled at Duchamp.

After only the slightest hesitation, Duchamp smiled back.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein