Short-Short 10: The Millers’ Porch: Pt. 2

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The Millers’ Porch: Pt. 2

The sun was just starting to set, and it shone directly onto the front porch. Julien could still make out the outline of the car as it sped down the dirt road. He gazed up at the sun and tried briefly to blind himself. Afterwards he was unable to see anything as he looked out on the brown patch of grass, the road, and the unused field that unfurled for a mile on the other side of the street. His hand hurt. He thought about going back to work and having to mark up those dull textbooks again, because he hadn’t read them close enough last time. The spots of light that filled his eyes started to fade and everything came back into focus. He checked the road again. The car was gone. He rocked slowly and effortlessly, his weight moving him. He wanted the car to come back, or a plane to pass by. He especially liked jets, liked to listen to them, liked to watch them fly off into the vastness, through the sky and over the horizon until they disappeared like one of Everett’s marbles rolling off the kitchen table.

An old sitcom came on the television, and Julien fell asleep to the sound of canned laughter. Everett listened for a moment, but he couldn’t figure out what show it was. The sound didn’t travel well.

Everett rolled onto his stomach and noticed the odd way the sunlight hit his sleeping father’s eyeglasses. They looked opaque. Everett turned onto his back and held a pair of detached bee’s wings up to the sunlight. The warm light on the translucent wings made them look like two tiny pieces of stained glass. Moments before, the bug had been lifeless, frozen, but now the bee’s body twitched on the ground. He smiled at the writhing, cylindrical form. He had recently lost several teeth, and he pushed his tongue through a large hole where an incisor had once been. He had neither his mom’s pale skin nor his father’s gloomy countenance. His bright green eyes and red hair made him look like he belonged on a page in a child’s coloring book. The sun went behind a cloud. Everett screwed the top onto the empty jar and walked past his father into the kitchen.

“Take off your shoes and leave them outside,” Rae said.

“I’m not wearing any, Mom.”

“Well, don’t bring any dirt into this house. I just cleaned it. Just because you’re off from school for the summer doesn’t mean you can go bringing dirt into the house.”

“I didn’t think it did, Mom.” He took a chocolate chip cookie from the pantry.

“You know I have more to do than clean up after you. What’s your father doing?”

“I think he’s sleeping.”

“Jesus Christ. He doesn’t move. All day long, he doesn’t move.”

Everett reached for another cookie.

“Don’t eat so many darn cookies. I’m not going to let you rot all those new teeth you have coming in like you rotted those old ones that just fell out. You’re keeping Dr. Morrison in business. You know that? I could have stuck a toothpick straight through that last one. That’s how big the hole was. Went straight through.”

“OK, Mom.” He took his hand out of the box.

-CP

Short-Short 9: The Miller’s Porch Pt. 1

Out on the porch, Julien Miller sat in a wicker rocking chair that he had spray-painted a year or so before. He gently shifted his weight while he picked white flakes from the blue polo shirt he wore. Glasses, as thick as magnifying lenses, rested on the bump of his nose, which, twice broken, protruded from his face like the gnarled root of an ancient tree. The grass in the front lawn was dried out and dead. The blades were a light brown, just about the color of Julien’s hair. The boy’s feet tramped silently over the brittle lawn.

He crossed one leg over the other and wiped the sweat from his brow. He moved the glistening skin into the sun and watched it reflect the light. In the yard his son, Everett, now sat in the grass. An empty jar lay at his side. Everett’s hands made swift, yanking movements. Julien looked down at his own palms and then flipped his hand over. He played meditatively with the vein that bulged out of the tight skin on the back of his left hand. He rocked in his chair. Painfully stretching out his cramped fingers, he ran them through his hair, and it to stuck up like the comb of a rooster. His face was gaunt, his cheeks pinched under his jawbone.

The television blared from inside the house. Nobody was watching it. His wife, Rae, sat at the kitchen table as she mindlessly gnawed on the eraser end of a pencil. She sang to herself through her gritted teeth:

“Muhbonnay luhs ova duh osen
Muhbonnay luhs ova duh zee”

Her skin was white, almost impossibly so, the color of steam escaping from a teakettle. When Julien met her, he thought her fair complexion was beautiful. He wrote her a poem two weeks after he had first seen her in British Literature during their second semester at Braxton University, the local school. He sat next to her for four classes without saying a word. He liked to breathe in her scent, something citrus mixed with chalk. He penned the sonnet during one inspired night and trudged through the rain to slide it under her dorm room door. In a way only college freshmen can, he managed to liken her to Helen of Troy, a dove, dandruff (jokingly), and the first New England snow, which he had never seen but always imagined to be pristine. Rae’s roommate woke up before her, found the letter and was not discreet with its contents. Sitting on the porch, Julien remembered his mother and the advice she had given him: “Take a look at a girl’s mom before you marry her and make sure she’s not fat.” Peering at his wife through the window, he thought more of a billowy cloud than the soft snow that might have fallen from it.

A breathy roar, like gas escaping from a hot-air balloon, rang out through the window. “Jules!”

“What?”

“How do you spell “sereendipitly?”

“Hunnh?”

“I’m writing a letter. Sereendipitly. How do you spell it?”

“Serendipitously?”

“That’s what I said. You deaf?”

He spelled it for her. Silence. He called back through the window.

“Who you writing to?”

A gust of wind blew across the porch.

“Who?”

“My brother Bobby. You really should get those ears checked.”

He didn’t believe her. He hadn’t seen or heard from her brother since their wedding day. Julien pictured Bobby showing up one afternoon with a raggedy suitcase. He’d beg Julien and Rae for a place to spend the night. He’d say he hadn’t heard from his sister in years but blood was damn sure still blood. And Julien would give his wife a glance, just one little look, and it would say, “I knew you were lying to me all along.”

“Oh,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”

“Dunno.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve been sitting out there for hours. Why don’t you come in and make something yourself? I’ve got to finish this letter. He’s been waiting to hear back from me for weeks now. Poor thing. I really must invite him out here for a week or two. It’s just such a long trip. But you should have read his last letter. Oh, I don’t remember where I put it. It was full of all sorts of sweet things. Are you listening? Why don’t you come inside? You haven’t done anything today. It really was a nice letter. Poor Bobby. You know he used to drink right? He says he quit. Come inside. Gil has been screaming all day. ‘Get me this. Get me that.’ You know that’s all I’ve been hearing for the last month?”

Julien’s stomach growled.

Short-Short 8: Diamonds and Rough

On the Las Vegas strip, over Exposure nightclub, there’s a smoky VIP Lounge called Diamonds. How I got into this place, I have no idea. Nor do I know whose mouth this is on mine, but the tongue feels like carpet and tastes like burnt eggs. I turn my head to avoid vomiting and spy my friend dancing. He’s rocking his hips in a slow rhythm while his jeans’ zipper swallows a blonde girl’s hand whole; her arm is wriggling, but it doesn’t look like much of a struggle.

I excuse myself from mystery-mouth and teeter to the bar. Two more of my friends are there, watching a pair of fake breasts bounce as their owner laughs. One hand claps my shoulder, another offers a shot of lord-only-knows. We all clink glasses.

I wake up alone on the couch of a Junior Suite.

Lunch is spent comparing stories, conquests. We golf until dusk and shower at the local outlet of a nationwide gym. On the drive home, we stop at a discount shopping boutique. I buy polo shirts, my friend with the predatory zipper purchases a pair of earrings. “Jewelry,” he says, “is the key to any successful marriage.”

At home, my fiancée asks if I brought her back any souvenirs.

-John Lander

Short-Short 7: Watching Porn, 3:47AM

At least she had the decency not to fuck him in front of a camera.

-CP

Short-Short 6: In the Eyes

Black, squirrelly eyes stared back at Doris. On the velvety pillow was a swatch of short, white hair that looked like it had come from the cotton candy machine at a circus. Doris ran her hand over the woman’s pale paper-thin cheek, beset with deep rivers of wrinkles and smaller tributary crevices. Respectable black dresses hung loosely from both women’s emaciated bodies. It was all quite surreal for Doris. Not many people have buried their identical twin sister.

-CP

Short-Short 5: Giving Back

Like all New Yorkers, Maria Santa-Himmelman had grown accustomed to her city’s homeless population. However, she had not yet adopted the normal blindness to their abject poverty. Instead, she had developed an elaborate hierarchy. It looked like this:

[Note: These are Mrs. Santa-Himmelman's words, as they appear in a journal entry marked May 11, 1994.]

1. The only kind of homeless of which I approve are those who possess a quiet dignity. They may hold out a cup. They may hold out a hand. But while asking for alms, they do not offer their eternal soul in exchange for your dollar.
2. I appreciate the minstrels, the street performers, and I will stop to listen to a good one. But I will never give them a cent. First of all, you can never tell if they’re really homeless or if they’re just pretending. Second, if they truly don’t have anywhere to go at night, I find that these people always get the most money from passerby.
3. Finally, there are those who complain and hound you and tell you their life story. I ran into one of these types today. I dropped some change into his cup, and he yelled out, “Hey, this isn’t going to get me shit. Thanks a lot.” He kept screaming as I walked, as if I were speeding away from the scene of a car accident.

By the time Mrs. Santa-Himmelman came across yet another bum sitting on the corner of 1st and 76th, these three guidelines had become law in her mind.

The bum had pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them, storing up heat on the blustery night. He had a long gray coat and scraggly beard. His breath coiled up into the cold air and disappeared a few feet above his head.

Mrs. Santa-Himmelman liked this man’s silence. She reached into her pocked and emptied several quarters into the Styrofoam cup by his foot.

“What the hell, lady?” the bum called out. Mrs. Santa-Himmelman stopped, silently preparing a defense of her charity. “I was drinking that.”

-CP

Short-Short 4: The Book of Job

Standing in his ratty hotel room, Harold held a torn page of the Book of Job between the thumb and forefinger of his quivering, sunburned hand. He looked down at it and ran his other hand over the bald spot in his crew cut that hid, like a secret oasis, in a desert of close cropped, ex-marine perfection.

A band of pale flesh wrapped around the base of his long, bony ringfinger like a skintight collar. All he wanted was to stop the shaking.

-CP

Long-Short 1: The Job Interview

Sorry, all. I was away for the weekend and didn’t have access to my computer. To make up for it, here’s a nice 1000 word story about a job interview, the reason I was out of town.

The Job Interview

“Come in, Mrs. Friedman,” said Mr. Spector. His voice sounded like air escaping from a tiny hole in a Ziploc bag. “We can get started right away. The sooner this is done the better, eh?”

Mrs. Friedman, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a thicket of curly gray hair, trod to Mr. Spector’s desk. She walked with determination bordering on malice, as if she aimed to crush several small insects underfoot. She looked down her chin at the much shorter man. After shaking hands, she took her seat. Little beads of sweat glistened on his balding head. Mrs. Friedman thought at once of an uncooked turkey. Tufts of hair sprouted from the open collar of his shirt. She wondered why the man conducting her interview was not wearing a tie. That was unacceptable, she thought, and she considered leaving right then and there. And his five o’clock shadow at nine in the morning? Honestly, what kind of man came into work like that?

“Oh, it would be my pleasure to get started,” she said. “Absolutely my pleasure. I’m really quite nervous. Really, I am. I never did do this before. I’m usually just a busy bee around the nest. You know what I mean, Mr. Spector? You know? I’m just a regular old worker bee. I do my work quietly and efficiently. I’m very quiet in general. I hate to make a fuss. You’ll see.” She controlled her booming, quavering voice with the same care a man uses when beating a dusty rug with a tennis racket.

Mr. Spector rolled his chair back a few feet. He began the Herculean task of carrying his soft voice over the piles of papers on his desk. “Well, welcome to our office. Our last secretary passed away a few weeks ago. But what are you going to do, right? And, so, I guess it’s time we hired a new one. Right?” The left side of his mouth twitched into what could be construed as a smile.

“Oh, well, I’d say so, Mr. Spector if I may. Very smart of you. I never did have such a mind for business, but I can tell you do. That’s for sure. It will be a real pleasure working here. It sure will. A real pleasure, Mr. Spector.”

“Yes.”

A minute of silence passed while Mr. Spector shuffled through the folders on his desk. “OK, here we go, Mrs. Friedman.” He pulled a piece of paper from an unmarked manila folder. “This is what I needed. OK, where to start? Where to start? Oh, this is a good one. Could you tell me about yourself, Mrs. Friedman?”

She shifted in her seat. “Well, I must say that it’s not my favorite topic. I’m rather modest, you see. But if you must know, Mr. Spector, I suppose we should start with the day I was born.” She pulled herself up straighter in the chair. “Did you know, Mr. Spector, that I made Roman Catholic Church history?”

“Unhh?” It was not a word. It was barely even a sound.

“Oh, yes. You see I was real sick. The Devil himself was in me, I think. At least that’s what the doctors said.” She was speaking louder and faster. “Are you a believing man, Mr. Spector? Oh, well, I guess that doesn’t matter. Anyway, I was close to death. I wake up every morning and thank Jesus that I’m still here. Thank you, Jesus.” She looked up at the ceiling and crossed herself. “Just like that. Well, anyway, we’re talking about me, right? Where was I? Oh, like I said, I made history. I’m the only person ever to receive her baptism, first Holy Communion, confirmation and Last Rites all on the same day. Did you know that, Mr. Spector? Completely holy since the day I was born. There wasn’t an inch in me where the Devil could live. There still isn’t. So I made it out of that whole ordeal, and I’m still here.” She paused for a second and panted. “Thanks to Jesus, of course.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Spector, looking up for the first time from his page of questions. He backed his chair up against the wall. “I’m sincerely glad that you made it. I have had my fair share of tragedies as well if I may share. Why, back when I was twelve or thirteen, I was playing baseball and I slid into third base and damn near broke off my hip. I was on crutches for five months. Six? Oh, God, I can’t even remember. It was terrible. I lived on the seventh floor of an old building, and there wasn’t an elevator. I don’t know how I made it through that. The human spirit, eh? It’s an amazing thing. Well, those months sure humbled me. And you certainly seem humbled by your whole experience. I’m sure your level-headedness is a direct consequence of your troubles. That’s how it usually is. We have to suffer first. Yes, I know that for sure. And you’ve definitely suffered. So it wasn’t all that bad, I suppose. Neither of our tragedies were that bad in the end. We learned from them didn’t we?”

“Yes, yes. I’m glad you see it that way. I knew you would, actually. I absolutely did. The second I walked in here in fact, I said to myself, ‘That’s a very respectable man. That’s the kind of man a woman would want to work for. That’s who I want to work for.’”

“Thank you, Mrs. Friedman. I have always said that respectability is the highest plateau to which a man can aspire. If that’s not a tried and true aphorism, I don’t know what is. I like to think that I am approaching it.”

“Oh, definitely, definitely. You’re there, Mr. Spector. You’ve arrived.”

-CP

Short Short 3: The Reigers

Mr. Reiger was reading the classifieds when the phone rang. It was around 5:30PM, and he was alone in the house.

“Hello,” he said.

“Dad?”

“Emma? Where are you? Are you on your way home?”

“No, I’m at John’s.”

Mr. Reiger pinched a zit and winced.

“Is he driving you back?”

“I’m not coming home–not tonight. He’ll get me to school in the morning. Bye, Dad.”

He let the receiver drop out of his hands. A car door slammed and Mrs. Reiger’s heels clacked up the driveway. She turned the key in the front door and let herself in.

“Hi, Richard,” she said.

“Emma isn’t coming home.”

“Again?” She slipped out of her shoes and put the groceries in the kitchen.

-CP

Short-Short 2: Fayetteville, NY

The 17th hole of Watson’s Mini-Golf in Fayetteville, New York was notoriously difficult. My dad lined up the putt, bent over like Nicklaus. He never sank it in one, never would.

“Watch this,” he said. It was his favorite expression–worn out on everything from knuckle-balls to card tricks.

The ball careened off a bumper, climbed halfway up a hill and trickled back down, stopping inches from my dad’s feet. “Oh, well,” he said.

We finished up. The 18th was always a cinch. Maybe it was because it ended so easily, but Dad always seemed sad to leave Watson’s. We drove home in silence. Mom had dinner ready when we walked in the door.

-CP