There is a familiar quiet across the gardens, the usual character of a Sunday afternoon in autumn. Visitors are thinly scattered across the grounds, the tea room and the house. There is no guided tour of the house at this time of year; people wander round in twos and threes. They speak in low voices to each other so that they are nearly muffled by the sounds of their own footfalls. Their shoes knock slowly on the floorboards and receive creaking replies.
‘Turn off the light, Susan.’ It is early morning and the cold has crept into the room through an open window. Susan doesn’t reply and I watch the plumes of her breath as she sighs gently and turns the page of her book. I put my hand lightly on her arm, ‘You must be exhausted, you’ve been reading all night.’ She glances in my direction, a hint of a smile flickers across her face which then twists in confusion. Her mouth gapes and her eyes begin to well with tears that drip on to the book’s white pages.
I pulled into the parking lot and chose a spot near the rear door where a stencilled sign on the window read Eee-Zee-Sudz-It 24 ho rs. Very funny. Not.
On Friday night, as usual, Mike Duchamps appeared at the back door with a few typed pages rolled up in one hand and a six pack dangling from the other. “I told you I have plenty of beer,” I said.
“Come on, Stan. I never arrive empty-handed,” he shot back, which was true. Mike is a fiction writer from Pawtucketville, which is a section of Lowell named after the Pawtucket Indians, who lived here for millennia and are no more. I live in the Highlands, which is another section of the city, and not a part of Scotland. I’m Mike’s only close friend who reads a lot, and so the only one whose opinion of his craft he values. He’s been reading me his stuff over beers on Friday nights for years. In return, he never comes empty-handed.
Some see the aging face as an ongoing story; others see it as a palimpsest from which the original pretty story has been scraped and is continuously replaced by increasingly derivative tales culled from the same source. Here, I find myself thinking Hamlet compared to Hamlet Versus Predator: To Bleed or Not to Bleed. Sadly, as you may plainly see, no metaphor holds up after you have looked at it long enough.
Word of Bisbee’s Dad’s funeral got passed around through friends via emails.
Good ol’ Bisbee.
Stanley Schlumperdink thought to himself of the times that he and the Diabolical Bis would hit on chicks together at Trader Vic’s at The Plaza in High School. Bisbee preferred the Tiki Puka Puka to the Spider Bowls. Either way. The girls back then had candy flavored pussies and a real love of high fashion.
Olivia and her boyfriend broke up on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t a surprise, really. Olivia had offered her boyfriend an amicable break up twice before by yelling, “Do you just want to split up?” two times. Although he had asked to stay together then, he had behaved otherwise by disappearing for hours and returning drunk without any explanation. As a last attempt at repair, Olivia had called his parents for help. His father had assured her that he would force his “idiot son” to propose if he only could.
Our house has no windows. On winter mornings, I leave in downpours and darkness at six, then return in the brooding grey of twilight. Sometimes your car is here and sometimes it’s not. On the evenings when you’re around we eat supper in silence, chewing food without flavour. I’m never hungry any more, either. We scrape more food into the dustbin than either of us eat. You take to the sofa behind the barrier of your phone, tapping out messages to whoever. I take the armchair and read books I’ve read before.
Breslin was dead now. Undeniably so. All you had to do was go back and read some of the old columns to see the talent and anger and originality. He was just another one who had made his mark and moved on.
Continue reading “What would Breslin have thought? by Adam Kluger”
Until a week ago Christopher thought it was all coming together. After the incident with Melina and his boss’ reaction to it, he knew it was all coming apart. What to do? His brother-in-law, an addict forever in search of a quick cure, presently touted the “The Stages of Change” system, as a guide to better health. Christopher couldn’t remember the fancy names they used but put simply they were phases describing your state as you advanced from an unhealthy (or in his case unprincipled) behavior to a healthier one.
