Vincent
“What are these?” Vincent asked Marjorie, the lady at What Goes Around Resale, a shop he popped into from time to time in his perpetual quest for still-life subject matter.
“Hand-knit dishcloths,” Marjorie said.
“Jesus,” Vincent said. “They’re little works of art. Every one’s a different pattern, did you notice?”
“Yes,” Marjorie said. “The lady who knitted them used to knit ‘em like crazy. We have a couple of her pattern books, too.”
Vincent took the booklets from Marjorie, examined the covers of Nifty Knit Dishcloths and Color Splash Dishcloths, and began flipping through the pages. “Jesus, these things take seventy-five, eighty-five yards of ‘one hundred percent cotton worsted weight yarn’ each. Amazing.” Then, “What do you mean ‘used to’? Did she die?”
“She did, poor soul,” Marjorie said. “All alone at her kitchen table. Of a brain aneurysm, according to her son.”
“Alone. That’s really sad,” Vincent said. “I wonder if one of these is ‘Tidy Time’—”
“Couldn’t say,” Marjorie said. “We got most of her things. Clothing mostly. She had a lot of fountain pens, too, of all things.”
“Fountain pens?”
“Yeah. But he changed his mind on those. Said he was going to try and sell ‘em on eBay instead. He was an odd one, that one. Gave me the creeps the way he kept staring at my forehead. Wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
“How much for the books and all the dishcloths?” Vincent said.
“Would you be interested in her yarn bag, too?” Marjorie said.
“Lemme see it,” Vincent said.
Back at the studio, Vincent arranged the yarn, the books, and the dishcloths on a gleaming mahogany table, adding a clear glass vase and three stargazer lilies as a background element. And while he did this and loaded the Hasselblad and positioned a foam-board reflector, he thought about the woman who’d died all alone, and wondered what had possessed her to churn out cotton dishcloths like crazy.
Had he only been privy to the fact of the matter—that knitting dishcloths, for Hope, had just been a way to hide from her husband—his still-life tableau might have been somewhat less saccharine.
# # #
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
199
Chuck
Rachelle made Chuck quiver, and being introverted and introspective he rarely found the nerve to do much more than mumble “G’morning” or “G’night.”
One unusually brazen Monday he asked her in the lunch room how her weekend had been, but she neither turned her head nor answered, which Chuck took as a not unexpected (or undeserved) snub, but which in reality had had everything to do with too little volume on his part and too much on the microwave oven’s—Rachelle being, at the end of the day, an attention-seeking missile.
Her fragrance did much to fuel Chuck’s ardor, too. It lingered in his nostrils and then in his libido long after every encounter. And when he overheard her telling Crystal that her perfume was called Obsession, he thought it less an amusing coincidence than a warning from the gods, because Chuck had no doubt that a heavenly body like Rachelle could provoke jealous ire even on Mount Olympus.
And thus it was that Chuck interpreted the unisex-lavatory episode as Divine Intervention—as opposed to Dose of Reality—when he stepped in one day to a blast of Obsession waging fruitless combat with the asphyxiating fumes of a massive dump.
# # #
Rachelle made Chuck quiver, and being introverted and introspective he rarely found the nerve to do much more than mumble “G’morning” or “G’night.”
One unusually brazen Monday he asked her in the lunch room how her weekend had been, but she neither turned her head nor answered, which Chuck took as a not unexpected (or undeserved) snub, but which in reality had had everything to do with too little volume on his part and too much on the microwave oven’s—Rachelle being, at the end of the day, an attention-seeking missile.
Her fragrance did much to fuel Chuck’s ardor, too. It lingered in his nostrils and then in his libido long after every encounter. And when he overheard her telling Crystal that her perfume was called Obsession, he thought it less an amusing coincidence than a warning from the gods, because Chuck had no doubt that a heavenly body like Rachelle could provoke jealous ire even on Mount Olympus.
And thus it was that Chuck interpreted the unisex-lavatory episode as Divine Intervention—as opposed to Dose of Reality—when he stepped in one day to a blast of Obsession waging fruitless combat with the asphyxiating fumes of a massive dump.
# # #
Friday, July 23, 2010
265
Rachelle
Six full months and seven filled notebooks later, Crystal’s plan to purge her head of poisonous content—by putting down on paper every embarrassment, every regrettable incident, every single thing she’d undo or do differently if only she could—hadn’t been going so well. The enormous snot bubble that had bloomed from her schnoz in front of the whole class that day in fifth grade was no less vivid in her mind’s peripheral vision, and no less mortifying.
It occurred to her that confiding in someone might help; and after an exhaustive mental vetting of everyone in her acquaintance, she decided to confide in her coworker Rachelle about this unremitting fixation. “After all,” she said to herself in the car on the way to work, “Rachelle confided in me that time in the break room.”
Yes, with a few suggestive winks and a liberal application of air quotes, Rachelle had indeed divulged to Crystal the sexual (air quotes) quirks of her new boyfriend, David, whom she’d met at the funeral of some woman who lived in her mother’s building—when she was living, Rachelle had hastened to clarify. “That woman loved her some fountain pens too, yo” she’d added parenthetically.
And so, mustering every molecule of gumption she could summon from what seemed like every cell in her body, Crystal confided in Rachelle about the snot bubble, and gained from that simple act a rush of closure that almost made her swoon. But the blessed relief proved all too brief when, not twenty minutes later, Felix poked his head into her cube and said, “Good morning ... Bubbles.”
# # #
Six full months and seven filled notebooks later, Crystal’s plan to purge her head of poisonous content—by putting down on paper every embarrassment, every regrettable incident, every single thing she’d undo or do differently if only she could—hadn’t been going so well. The enormous snot bubble that had bloomed from her schnoz in front of the whole class that day in fifth grade was no less vivid in her mind’s peripheral vision, and no less mortifying.
It occurred to her that confiding in someone might help; and after an exhaustive mental vetting of everyone in her acquaintance, she decided to confide in her coworker Rachelle about this unremitting fixation. “After all,” she said to herself in the car on the way to work, “Rachelle confided in me that time in the break room.”
Yes, with a few suggestive winks and a liberal application of air quotes, Rachelle had indeed divulged to Crystal the sexual (air quotes) quirks of her new boyfriend, David, whom she’d met at the funeral of some woman who lived in her mother’s building—when she was living, Rachelle had hastened to clarify. “That woman loved her some fountain pens too, yo” she’d added parenthetically.
And so, mustering every molecule of gumption she could summon from what seemed like every cell in her body, Crystal confided in Rachelle about the snot bubble, and gained from that simple act a rush of closure that almost made her swoon. But the blessed relief proved all too brief when, not twenty minutes later, Felix poked his head into her cube and said, “Good morning ... Bubbles.”
# # #
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
250
Hope
It wasn’t until later in life, much later, that Hope had begun to appreciate the interesting child she had been, and, perhaps, to some extent at least, find something to admire there, something to hang some self-worth on.
Take her early and persistent ardor for fountain pens.
She’d bought her first fountain pen—a clear-barreled Schaefer with a chromed metal cap—at eleven, at Woolworth’s, for a dollar. It came with two royal-blue cartridges, and Hope had found the kit’s comparatively exotic allure (versus Bic ballpoints and number 2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils) irresistible.
A dollar at that time, make no mistake, was a substantial sum, was more than some grown-ups earned per hour, and so the impulse to purchase the pen had brought with it a sizable opportunity for buyer’s remorse. But only constant delight had followed, as well as a succession of increasingly costly fountain pens, each more sublime than its predecessor in heft and feel and fluency.
Hope had been the only kid she knew who used fountain pens. From sixth grade on she’d done all her homework and quizzes and even her high-school math tests in fountain pen.
As an adult, she’d composed journal entries and greeting-card captions with a Parker. Had jotted grocery lists and notes-to-self with a Pelikan. Had had a green-marble Waterman Phileas medium-point (always, always a medium point) in her purse hanging on the doorknob when she died, and had been saving her pennies for a Montblanc Meisterstück 149 instead of a rainy day.
# # #
It wasn’t until later in life, much later, that Hope had begun to appreciate the interesting child she had been, and, perhaps, to some extent at least, find something to admire there, something to hang some self-worth on.
Take her early and persistent ardor for fountain pens.
She’d bought her first fountain pen—a clear-barreled Schaefer with a chromed metal cap—at eleven, at Woolworth’s, for a dollar. It came with two royal-blue cartridges, and Hope had found the kit’s comparatively exotic allure (versus Bic ballpoints and number 2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils) irresistible.
A dollar at that time, make no mistake, was a substantial sum, was more than some grown-ups earned per hour, and so the impulse to purchase the pen had brought with it a sizable opportunity for buyer’s remorse. But only constant delight had followed, as well as a succession of increasingly costly fountain pens, each more sublime than its predecessor in heft and feel and fluency.
Hope had been the only kid she knew who used fountain pens. From sixth grade on she’d done all her homework and quizzes and even her high-school math tests in fountain pen.
As an adult, she’d composed journal entries and greeting-card captions with a Parker. Had jotted grocery lists and notes-to-self with a Pelikan. Had had a green-marble Waterman Phileas medium-point (always, always a medium point) in her purse hanging on the doorknob when she died, and had been saving her pennies for a Montblanc Meisterstück 149 instead of a rainy day.
# # #
Saturday, July 17, 2010
492
Queenie
Queenie just loved The Price Is Right. So much so that she kept right on watching after Bob Barker retired in June of 2007, and that comparative dullard Drew Carey took over as host—although, in all fairness, not even avuncular Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” could have effectively replaced the man Queenie regarded as the all-time God of Game Shows and principal deity of daytime TV.
But as much as she loved the program, Queenie had a few issues with The Price Is Right. She did not like—which is to say, wanted to murder—those asshole contestants who were always asking “What was the last bid, Bob (Drew)?” so they could go exactly one dollar higher and thereby screw their fellow contestant out of a fighting chance at winning the frigging prize and getting to dash onstage for a shot at a Chrysler Town & Country. I mean, play fair! Queenie thought. That shit just bugged the shit out of her.
And as for all the cars the show awarded, and had been awarding since something like 1972, well, it only stood to reason that a percentage of those people had wound up getting killed in the cars they won on The Price Is Right, which took irony too far the way Queenie saw it. I mean, those poor souls figured winning a car was the luckiest damn thing that ever happened to them, or ever would happen, and look what a nasty joke that turned out to be, Queenie thought. Just nasty.
Then there was Plinko, the game where a contestant let five fancy pucks slide down a peg-studded inclined board into slots at the bottom with cash values ranging from zero dollars to ten thousand dollars. The announcer always made a great big deal about the CHANCE TO WIN UP TO FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, but no one had ever done that, or ever would do it, the way Queenie saw it. It was just so much bullshit. The closest anyone had come was thirty thousand one hundred dollars, during Drew Carey’s first season, and before that it was something like twenty-two thousand. Queenie knew this because she had looked it up online. It always seemed to Queenie that the chips had eyes for those two slots worth zip.
But anyway. It was Plinko Queenie thought of at the top of the stairs one morning, with three rolls of toilet paper in her arms for reloading the TP holder in the powder room, just beyond the stairway. She dropped one roll onto the first step and watched as it bounced its way to the bottom and straight through the powder-room door. Score! Queenie thought. The second roll scored too—and so did the third.
Son of a bitch! Queenie thought. Unaware that that was going to be not only the luckiest thing that would happen in her life that day, but for the rest of the year.
# # #
Queenie just loved The Price Is Right. So much so that she kept right on watching after Bob Barker retired in June of 2007, and that comparative dullard Drew Carey took over as host—although, in all fairness, not even avuncular Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” could have effectively replaced the man Queenie regarded as the all-time God of Game Shows and principal deity of daytime TV.
But as much as she loved the program, Queenie had a few issues with The Price Is Right. She did not like—which is to say, wanted to murder—those asshole contestants who were always asking “What was the last bid, Bob (Drew)?” so they could go exactly one dollar higher and thereby screw their fellow contestant out of a fighting chance at winning the frigging prize and getting to dash onstage for a shot at a Chrysler Town & Country. I mean, play fair! Queenie thought. That shit just bugged the shit out of her.
And as for all the cars the show awarded, and had been awarding since something like 1972, well, it only stood to reason that a percentage of those people had wound up getting killed in the cars they won on The Price Is Right, which took irony too far the way Queenie saw it. I mean, those poor souls figured winning a car was the luckiest damn thing that ever happened to them, or ever would happen, and look what a nasty joke that turned out to be, Queenie thought. Just nasty.
Then there was Plinko, the game where a contestant let five fancy pucks slide down a peg-studded inclined board into slots at the bottom with cash values ranging from zero dollars to ten thousand dollars. The announcer always made a great big deal about the CHANCE TO WIN UP TO FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, but no one had ever done that, or ever would do it, the way Queenie saw it. It was just so much bullshit. The closest anyone had come was thirty thousand one hundred dollars, during Drew Carey’s first season, and before that it was something like twenty-two thousand. Queenie knew this because she had looked it up online. It always seemed to Queenie that the chips had eyes for those two slots worth zip.
But anyway. It was Plinko Queenie thought of at the top of the stairs one morning, with three rolls of toilet paper in her arms for reloading the TP holder in the powder room, just beyond the stairway. She dropped one roll onto the first step and watched as it bounced its way to the bottom and straight through the powder-room door. Score! Queenie thought. The second roll scored too—and so did the third.
Son of a bitch! Queenie thought. Unaware that that was going to be not only the luckiest thing that would happen in her life that day, but for the rest of the year.
# # #
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
305
Crystal
Not even the doe cantering across open grass barely thirty yards from the highway could break Crystal’s fixation on the thing that had been haunting her all day long and just would not shut the hell up. Under ordinary circumstances she’d have thrilled to a flash of dashing fauna while driving home from work. But that snot bubble had ruined this, too.
Why did that have to happen? she kept asking herself with the disbelieving indignation of someone who’s scolding God. How could you have let that happen?
The sudden recollection of that bubble—as big as a golf ball or a paddle ball at least—could not have been more vivid or seemed more immediate had Crystal been Proust biting into a madeleine.
She’d been standing in front of her fifth-grade class, nervously delivering an oral book report, and with no forewarning and for no apparent reason had snorted in mid-sentence, such that a huge bubble of snot had bloomed from her left nostril to the shrieking, guffawing delight of everyone in the room, Miss Goik included.
Why did that have to happen to me?
And why did that mortifying memory have to come rushing into her brain as she was buttering her wheat toast at 6:44 a.m.? And why had she not been able to blind her mind’s eye to it from that moment on? There seemed to be no stopping the video loop; not with the quotidian activities of the workplace or the casual banter of the lunchroom or even with a doe cantering over open grass.
So Crystal decided to purge her head of poisonous content by putting it all down on paper—every embarrassment, every regrettable incident, every single thing she’d undo or do differently if only she could. She started filling her first spiral notebook that evening, believing that looking backward was the best thing she could do for herself, going forward.
# # #
Not even the doe cantering across open grass barely thirty yards from the highway could break Crystal’s fixation on the thing that had been haunting her all day long and just would not shut the hell up. Under ordinary circumstances she’d have thrilled to a flash of dashing fauna while driving home from work. But that snot bubble had ruined this, too.
Why did that have to happen? she kept asking herself with the disbelieving indignation of someone who’s scolding God. How could you have let that happen?
The sudden recollection of that bubble—as big as a golf ball or a paddle ball at least—could not have been more vivid or seemed more immediate had Crystal been Proust biting into a madeleine.
She’d been standing in front of her fifth-grade class, nervously delivering an oral book report, and with no forewarning and for no apparent reason had snorted in mid-sentence, such that a huge bubble of snot had bloomed from her left nostril to the shrieking, guffawing delight of everyone in the room, Miss Goik included.
Why did that have to happen to me?
And why did that mortifying memory have to come rushing into her brain as she was buttering her wheat toast at 6:44 a.m.? And why had she not been able to blind her mind’s eye to it from that moment on? There seemed to be no stopping the video loop; not with the quotidian activities of the workplace or the casual banter of the lunchroom or even with a doe cantering over open grass.
So Crystal decided to purge her head of poisonous content by putting it all down on paper—every embarrassment, every regrettable incident, every single thing she’d undo or do differently if only she could. She started filling her first spiral notebook that evening, believing that looking backward was the best thing she could do for herself, going forward.
# # #
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
185
David
During Warren’s viewing, David had thought it might be droll to baffle the (air quotes) bereaved by combining penetrating stares with ridiculously long pregnant pauses.
And so whenever someone approached him to offer his or her condolences, he would stare disconcertingly at a point slightly above the middle of that person’s forehead and inwardly count hippopotamus one, hippopotamus two, until he reached twenty-five before saying “thank you” or whatever random remark happened to pop into his head. Then he’d salt the rest of what passed for conversation with absurdly protracted pauses—without shifting his unblinking gaze—until the disconcerted well-wisher flaked off, ostensibly to respectfully regard Warren’s corpse or appreciatively examine one of the two meager floral arrangements book-ending Warren’s coffin.
At Hope’s funeral service he opted to go with enigmatic air quotes instead. For instance, when a lady from Hope’s apartment building commented on how good Hope looked in repose, David replied, “Yes, she certainly does,” air quoting does.
But a little later, when Milena took him aside and told him she was late—air quoting the word late—he had no frigging idea what she meant.
# # #
During Warren’s viewing, David had thought it might be droll to baffle the (air quotes) bereaved by combining penetrating stares with ridiculously long pregnant pauses.
And so whenever someone approached him to offer his or her condolences, he would stare disconcertingly at a point slightly above the middle of that person’s forehead and inwardly count hippopotamus one, hippopotamus two, until he reached twenty-five before saying “thank you” or whatever random remark happened to pop into his head. Then he’d salt the rest of what passed for conversation with absurdly protracted pauses—without shifting his unblinking gaze—until the disconcerted well-wisher flaked off, ostensibly to respectfully regard Warren’s corpse or appreciatively examine one of the two meager floral arrangements book-ending Warren’s coffin.
At Hope’s funeral service he opted to go with enigmatic air quotes instead. For instance, when a lady from Hope’s apartment building commented on how good Hope looked in repose, David replied, “Yes, she certainly does,” air quoting does.
But a little later, when Milena took him aside and told him she was late—air quoting the word late—he had no frigging idea what she meant.
# # #
Friday, July 2, 2010
181
Barry
Which one was it, anyway? You know, Certs. Was it a breath mint or a candy mint?
That’s sort of how Barry was on his Harley hog. Was he a pirate? Or a cowboy? The argument pro pirate was fortified by the head bandanna and the hoop earrings. But then what to make of the chaps? And more particularly, the spurs?
Yes, the spurs.
Nickel-plated, rowel-less spurs, which, come to think of it, were of the sort for riding to the hounds. Or show-jumping. So the question, more probably, should be, was Barry a pirate or an equestrian when out profiling on his Harley?
One thing for certain: Barry was a thoroughbred phony. He did nothing that was not premeditated, that had not been calculated for augmenting the persona.
When you spoke to Barry, you were speaking to a guy who’d imagined spurs, who’d sought out and purchased spurs, who’d donned spurs to elicit frissons of wonder and admiration from those sufficiently fortunate to witness his grandeur.
And when Barry spoke to you, it was usually the spurs doing the talking.
# # #
Which one was it, anyway? You know, Certs. Was it a breath mint or a candy mint?
That’s sort of how Barry was on his Harley hog. Was he a pirate? Or a cowboy? The argument pro pirate was fortified by the head bandanna and the hoop earrings. But then what to make of the chaps? And more particularly, the spurs?
Yes, the spurs.
Nickel-plated, rowel-less spurs, which, come to think of it, were of the sort for riding to the hounds. Or show-jumping. So the question, more probably, should be, was Barry a pirate or an equestrian when out profiling on his Harley?
One thing for certain: Barry was a thoroughbred phony. He did nothing that was not premeditated, that had not been calculated for augmenting the persona.
When you spoke to Barry, you were speaking to a guy who’d imagined spurs, who’d sought out and purchased spurs, who’d donned spurs to elicit frissons of wonder and admiration from those sufficiently fortunate to witness his grandeur.
And when Barry spoke to you, it was usually the spurs doing the talking.
# # #
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