book

It recently occurred to me that I’m going to need to use nearly all my actually free time working on my novel, especially during these busy summer weeks. Sadly, this means I have to suspend, at least for now, my goal of posting a new story here every Monday.

I will still post a new story when I’m particularly inspired, or when I need a break from the book after making significant progress on it. For now, however, finishing the novel is my highest priority.

As I’ve done before, I may also occasionally post excerpts from it.

OK, I lied

No new post today either. I apologize. I was out of town all last week, and wanted nothing more than to relax and enjoy Memorial Day weekend.

This week

With apologies, there will be no new story or vignette this Monday. I am out of town and occupied with other things. Back next week.

Valley in Spring

He had always loved the smooth, cool baldness of the coffee beans sliding in his calloused hand, slippery dry on dry, as he scooped them from the wooden crate.  His sleepy, blue eyes peered out the small window of his cabin as he ground the beans for his breakfast.  Outside, along the frosted ridge, dawn pulled its gossamer light through the brittle mountain air.

Fine coffee beans, brought up all the way through New Mexico – they were one of the few luxuries he gave himself out here, in the lonely cold.  Their warm aroma, gurgling now in percolator, kept him company with the memory of the conversations that once bookended day and night.

He opened the creaky cabin door and stepped outside.  The chill was bracing, a shot down the spine.  As he brought the metal cup of steaming black coffee to his lips, he gazed out over the wooden rail, down into the broad valley below.

Such a long, long winter, now finally breaking.  Just days ago, all at once, spring pushed the dead season aside like an old, fallen tree, tossed a million gold and violet jacks across the brown and gray expanse, and swelled the valley stream.  That winter had nearly broken him, with its icy teeth and feral gales.  Worst he had experienced in his years out here.  Worst he had experienced since he first began enduring them alone.

Below, drinking from the stream, he saw his brown horse, Abigail.  She tossed her tail, the thick, black hair arching in the wind.  He blinked, and a long, thick, black mane cascaded from the head of his laughing wife as she stooped at the stream’s edge to fill a bucket.  He could see her so clearly there, as stunning and strong as the day she was taken, with her deep, brown, Apache eyes and smooth, glowing skin.  He could see her smile, flashing bright as the high sun from the water.  He felt her hand in his, so small, so firm.

This time, this spring, he knew who had taken her.  The news had come in the deathly calm, the silvery dark of a cloudless February night, just as the last of his money was dwindling to a trickle.  North of here, deep in those flinty, arrowhead mountains, there lived a man and his brother.  Back in the cabin, pale and grim in an unlit corner, his rifle.

He and Abigail had both survived the winter, and the slender warmth of the April sun awoke the blood in their veins.  Soon, the light and strength would cascade over them like a flood.  But today wasn’t the day.

Today was a day for memory.  Today was a day to nod once more at the past before he finally left it on the trail, to savor completely this beautiful, haunted valley.  Today was a day – perhaps the last – to taste the deep, fertile blackness of coffee once more as he leaned on his wooden rail, bare forearms in the chill, listening to the whisper of the wind pouring past him, down from the ridge, over the dandelions and the thyme, washing the ghosts away.

Experiment at the Symphony Orchestra

[The following is a short excerpt from the science-fiction novel I'm currently writing.]

~ ~ ~

Dr. Scofield awoke with a startled snort.  A florid rush of orchestral sound was playing at full volume from the documentary, which he had left running as he dozed off.  He sat up a bit in his couch and winced at the screen; it showed a full-size symphony orchestra arrayed across a stage in a lavish concert hall.  The orchestral arrangement was flawlessly formal, with all the players and the conductor, of course, in stark tuxedos.  The camera’s wide view panned from the stage to the audience, sharply dressed and serious in the dim concert lights, the rows upon rows of rapt faces stretching back into obscuring shadow.

As the camera panned back to the stage, the sound on the video came down and Janet’s narration began again: “This is Tim Grayson’s first – and last – public performance as a musician.  That’s him near the front, on the grand piano.  This is the first night of a sold-out, three night engagement at the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Stravinsky’s highly technical and difficult Piano Concerto.  Tim is playing with them cold, knowing the piece but never having rehearsed with this orchestra before.  Many decried the billing as a stunt, and a very risky one at that.  But regardless of the purpose or the outcome, anyone who doubted Mr. Grayson’s ability to feel strong emotion had their doubts firmly and forever put to rest that night.”

As Janet’s narration ended and the sound from the orchestra came back again, the video switched to a closer shot of Tim, sitting at the piano, scooting himself closer to the edge of his bench as the signature segment of the piece approached.  The time had come, the great test of this supposed musical genius.

Tim surged savagely into the keys, racing to keep up with the score’s breakneck pace.  Although he skillfully stayed abreast of the solo, a rare frown soured his face as he sweated profusely in his tuxedo, the glistening white baldness of his head bulging from his black jacket like an uncovered, high-watt light bulb.

His frown only deepened as he played, a strange anger pouring out from him and into the piano in hot waves, giving his performance of the manic score a fitting and enthralling edge of aggression.  Then, just as he was accelerating toward the staggeringly intricate crown jewel of the piece, he winced, as if recoiling from a bad smell.  At that exact moment, his fingers, about to pounce into the thrilling summit of his featured part, abruptly stopped.

The conductor’s head snapped to the left to see what happened, his mouth falling open as Tim’s pale hands withdrew from the keys, grabbed at the lapels of his jacket, and yanked the jacket from his body.  Loud gasps jumped out from the audience.  The rest of the players struggled to maintain cohesion.  The conductor, his long face ashen, valiantly marched the orchestra onward through what was supposed to be the great climax of the piece, but the sound drooped without the piano solo, and all eyes were now irrevocably on Tim.

The gasps from the audience turned to anxious murmurs as Tim stood up from his bench, threw his jacket to the floor, and stomped across the stage in the general direction of the double bass section.  Before anyone could discern where precisely Tim was going, one of the bassists stopped playing and stood up from his chair.  Tim marched up to him, barked something inaudible, then stormed off the stage.  Every person in the sold-out crowd sat in stunned silence.

The documentary’s camera footage jumped ahead in time to a somewhat chaotic scene just off stage-right, with stagehands fluttering about and the sounds of the audience anxiously babbling in the background.  The performance had obviously ended, whether at the planned point or more suddenly due to Tim’s outburst, and the camera shook as its wielder ran out to the stage.  The camera approached the scolded bassist slumping in his chair, his eyes glazed with confusion and ruin as a handful of his colleagues huddled around him with sympathetic faces.

Janet’s voice, off-camera, asked him, “Sir, what did he say to you?”

The bassist turned and looked into the camera.  He appeared to be in his thirties, his face still mildly handsome even through its pallid mask of humiliation.  His Russian accent was thick, but his English was clear enough to understand.  “He said, ‘I’m sick of your attitude.’”

~ ~ ~

Trump Does the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

The Annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner – an exclusive gala celebrating the work of the nation’s top-flight journalists who cover the White House and the President of the United States – was soon to begin. That night, before traditionally humorous speeches from the President and a featured comedian, the Association would bestow prestigious awards for the year’s greatest achievements by members of the White House press corps.

Before the formal festivities commenced, a less-noticed, but just as important ritual would take place: the orgiastic merging of streams of A-list invitees, including the hottest celebrities and most powerful politicians, all mingling amongst the honored journalists and their colleagues. This being their event, the media attendees would necessarily maintain the utmost professional poise, upholding the dignity and independence of their vaunted public role even as one marquee name after another strode into the hotel, all dressed in black tie and formal gowns.

Casually lounging at the open bar, Ed Henry of CNN, Savannah Guthrie of NBC News, Mike Allen of Politico, and some of their press colleagues struggled in vain not to watch the door. They were, after all, supposed to be steely-eyed bearers of the storied legacies of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, having far more important objects of concern than whether the cream of Hollywood deigned to grace the “nerd prom” with their presence. This immovable journalistic coolness, this unflappability in the face of power, fame, and fortune, was the reason for their elite status and compensation.

Two bodyguards wearing earpieces and wraparound shades entered the ballroom. They stood at either side of the doorway. All seemed to go quiet.

Striding in after the bodyguards, in ultra-slow motion, was rapper “will.i.am,” followed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian. Their aviator sunglasses brilliantly reflected the flashes from the banks of photographers flanking them on either side. They panned their mirrored gazes across the room, then stopped to pose. In perfect unison, still in slow motion, they removed the sunglasses from their faces and turned meticulously honed, gleaming smiles toward each cameraman in a left-to-right sweep.

Ed Henry scoffed into his glass of single-malt scotch and shook his head. Was he supposed to be impressed and captivated by these tawdry, temporary objects of the public’s fickle imagination?

Savannah Guthrie nearly dropped her cosmopolitan. She gawked at Kim and will.i.am. ”Oh my God, it’s really them,” she gasped. She grabbed her bewildered, pudgy NBC colleague by the wrist and dragged him with her to the celebrity pair. Ed Henry snorted again.

Will.i.am turned to Savannah as the snapshots around him began to die down. “Oh, hey,” he said to her, pointing. “You’re that hot reporter from… oh what channel was that…”

“NBC News,” she said, blushing violently. “I am just a big, big fan, will.i.am.” She leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Your ‘Yes We Can’ song during the 2008 presidential campaign gave me chills.”

“All right, all right!” he said, nodding at her low-cut, red satin gown.

Savannah’s colleague stood quietly in his rented tuxedo, eying Kim Kardashian with clammy intensity. “Hi, Kim,” he mumbled, waiving at waist level.

Kim didn’t notice. She was busy signing Admiral Mike Mullen’s copy of her hot pink book, Kardashian Konfidential.

Donald Trump Goes to Iowa

Donald Trump stepped down from his Mercedes-Benz Style EC145 Luxury Helicopter, his Gucci Oxford shoes clicking on the sun-bleached pavement.  The wind from the spinning rotor blades whipped his tie around and flattened the oddly downy, brownish hair on his head, like an old cat that hated being petted.  He squinted critically in the Midwestern sun, surveying the flat, alien landscape.

It was the second day of his “exploratory” visit to Iowa as a potential presidential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012.  His narrowed eyes quickly calculated the net worth of the landing pad and field around him.  His net worth was much, much greater.  So much greater, in fact, that it was hardly even worth mentioning to his personal assistant and newly appointed political strategist, Gary Busey, standing beside him.

Still, it needed to be said.  “My net worth is so much greater than this landing pad and field, Busey.”  Gary nodded and licked his lips.  Trump looked up, visualizing a gleaming, faux gold leaf-wrapped skyscraper stretching high into the sky where he stood.  He stuck out his lower lip and nodded pensively at the image.  He would come back to that later – for now, he had to attend to less pleasant business.

fyi

Instead of Monday, I’ll be posting my next piece a few days earlier this time.  I need to put some serious time into my novel this weekend. Writing short stories is tremendous fun, but also very distracting from the slow-and-steady book.

one more note for now

I recently realized that the email subscriptions probably send the full text of each new post as soon as it goes up. If this is the case, subscribers are only getting the very first iteration of each story.

Although I try only to post stories once I’ve revised and proofread them a few times, mistakes still get through that I need to correct, and I often make minor substantive changes, even after posting (in the case of “Escape Artists,” I made a fairly major change). For that reason, I encourage subscribers perhaps to wait a short while when they first get the email, then read the finer-tuned version here, instead of the one in the email.

Just a suggestion. Thanks again for reading.

The Basement

“This party is going to be epic, really one to remember,” said Brad, leaning back in his crackling wicker chair.  He was sitting with his three roommates on the porch of the brick house they rented together.  The house, battered and worn from perennially being occupied by college students such as them, was located in a leafy residential neighborhood about a mile from the sprawling university campus.

Brad pushed his long, black hair from his eyes and crossed a sandaled foot over his knee.  “How many kegs did you say we could afford so far, Birdman?”

Despite the fact that he was sitting on a low, sunken couch, Birdman was clearly over six feet tall, with long, lanky arms and legs.  Like Brad, he had shoulder-length hair, except that his was dirty blond and curly.  He wore a faded, purple Jimi Hendrix shirt and a hemp necklace.  “Six kegs if we stick with Victory ale, but more like ten if we go with that light beer piss.”  Birdman’s voice was somewhat high-pitched, and his words tumbled out at an amusingly rapid, stream-of-consciousness pace.

“I think we should stick with the good stuff,” said Gabe, sitting next to Birdman on the couch.  Gabe was a slightly chubby kid with soft, blue eyes and a thick lumberjack beard, his voice as calm and gentle as Birdman’s was manic.

Brad frowned at him.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t want us to run out.  I think a lot of kids are going to be coming to this.”

“No way!” Casey jovially protested from her perch on the wood porch railing.  She kicked her legs and beamed at Brad with her carefree grin.  “Gabe is right, stick with the Victory ale.  No contest there, dude!”

Gabe couldn’t take his eyes off Casey. She dressed like the boys – sloppy T-shirt, flip-flops, corduroy pants.  She had long, thick, burgundy hair.  Despite her tomboyish appearance and demeanor, with a freckled face and a smiling voice, she was undeniably, youthfully beautiful.  “This isn’t a frat house, we don’t drink Bud Light here!”

Birdman tittered.  Brad looked at Casey, knowing he was no match for her.  He smirked and rolled with it.  “You’re right, quality over quantity.”  Casey nodded vigorously.

“Bird, are you guys going to set up in the basement?” Gabe asked his couch-mate.

“Yeah, we’ll probably just go in the far corner,” Birdman said all at once.  “That way we can broadcast vibes through the whole house, from its bottom root chakra.  Just explode up from deep in the house’s subconscious and infect the whole place with cosmic energy.”  He demonstrated with his hands, putting them together on his lap and quickly raising them up above his head, spreading his long fingers into a sunburst.  He laughed, amused with the image he had created.

“That’s awesome, Bird, can’t wait to hear the Entropy Surfers play,” said Gabe.  Casey nodded again.

“Which reminds me,” Brad said, returning to business.  “Come on, guys, follow me for a second.”

The four went inside, immediately joined by Brad’s dog, Odin, and Gabe’s dog, Morrison.  Both were medium-sized, short-haired, splotchy mutts.  Odin and Morrison trotted behind the four roommates as they walked down the hall, past the living room, into the messy kitchen, and down the creaky basement steps.

The basement was a dank, unfurnished open space, with a grimy concrete floor.  Two lonely beams of afternoon sun shone through the squat windows near the ceiling, struggling against the cave-like darkness.  Brad gestured to the wall that had the windows.  “So – band goes over there.”  He turned and walked the other way, past the stairs, toward a closed metal door on the rear wall.  “And we should put the kegs over here, by the little boiler room.  Everyone always congregates by the beer, so this way there will always be a good crowd in front of the band.”

Gabe eyed the boiler room door.  “As long as we leave that shut,” he said.  Birdman giggled anxiously.

Brad’s face flickered with a tentative grin.  “Why do you say that?”