Category: fiction

No Problem

Showered, shaved, and coiffed, the finishing touch was required, the SPF 50 UV A/B blocker that would allow him to enjoy the sunny day while he rode his bike down to have coffee (and maybe a doughnut) with his friends.

But it wasn’t in its proper location among his essential toilet vials and tubes. Probably because he’d put it away in the wrong place yesterday, silly git. Each drawer was opened, searched, and closed, and then again because it must be in one of those drawers and he was just overlooking it.

Or it was on the tray where he keeps his stuff on the counter, knocked over, perhaps, or out of sight behind something else – hard to believe, because that tube is orange and yellow and the rest on there are green, black, or white — except the Trader Joe’s moisturizing shave cream that he uses (which is also an orange tube) — but the little bastard of suntan stuff wasn’t there, where it should be. So he must have carried it off somewhere, yes, probably while feeding the dog, or playing with the dog, or something with the dog, or maybe — did he get interrupted while he was applying it yesterday? There’d been one day when he’d had a phone call — which day? Who’d called? Someone had called. What day had that been?

Christ, he couldn’t remember anything. Maybe, maybe it’d had happened – yesterday? But — maybe he hadn’t used the suntan lotion yesterday. Had he used the suntan lotion yesterday? He didn’t remember, he couldn’t remember. Well, assume that he’d been using it and had gotten interrupted or had carried it off absent-mindedly — because that’s never happened — and put it down in another room, like the utility room – right, because that’s where the dog is fed — or the laundry room – no — or the other bathroom — no — or kitchen – NO.

Christ, had he thrown it away? Maybe he’d thrown it away by accident. Or maybe he’d put it into the freezer or recycled it or — or — whatever the hell people did when they were getting old and losing their mind. Maybe he was getting that thing, what? What’s it called? Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s. Was this his Still Alice moment? Maybe this was the onset of dementia — or maybe —

He saw his husband in the office. “You haven’t seen my suntan lotion, have you?”

“Yes, I used it yesterday. I was in a hurry and needed some, but I was out, so I grabbed yours and took it with me, and I left it in the car.” His husband smiled. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled back. “No problem.” Going out to the car, he chuckled at all the things he’d thought while he’d been searching – overreacting – 

Stopping at the car, he paused in thought.

Why the hell was out he out here?

2

In the Bar

I await my turn. I am polite. Patient looking. Outside. Inside my fortress of solitude, where everything is secret, I rant at the slowness. Prozac people in a Prozac ballet, taking orders, accepting money and plastic, making drinks and change, handing out libation. It’s a thick crowd, hungering for libation, awaiting our turns under a televised baseball game.

The man beside me on the stool looks at me and frowns. I smile at him but decide not to speak. He’s drinking a beer. Looks like beer in the glass, anyway.

He says, “It must be hard to a woman. Learn to walk in heels. Find bras that fit you. Have guys stare at you.”

I’m dumbfounded into silence.

He says, “Fitting a bra is difficult. Men don’t need to learn how clothes fit them, not like bras. Men don’t wear bras.”

I’m about to counter him but I don’t want to speak. Speaking will encourage him.

He says, “I guess some men do, men who are going through a transgender thing, becoming a woman, I guess they need to learn how to walk in heels and fit a bra, if they get boobs. I suppose they get boobs. That’s part of being a woman, right? They also need to wear pantyhose, I guess, which I think is revolting, encasing yourself, like you’re a sausage. Remember that Seinfeld episode when George’s father and Kramer create the mansiere? Man, that was funny.”

He takes a drink of his beer. The bartender looks at me and raises his chin and his eyebrows, expressing to me without words, you’re next, what do you want?

I order a beer. IPA.

The man beside me says, “What was I saying?”

0

Word Count

He was mentioned as not being very talkative, but I found him loquacious. I mentioned the disparity to him.

“Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t talk much around my wife and family, or her friends.”

He turned his beer bottle by its neck. “I read a 2014 study about the number of words men and women use in a day. They always used to say that women talk more than men, but this study showed that men and women speak the same amount on average, about sixteen thousand words a day. Most of us filter it out. I talk more at work than at home because they filter more of my words out at home.”

“How do you do that? I mean, how do you figure something like that out?”

“Well, it’s all rough. There are a lot of factors. I set up a spreadsheet to figure out the average. I can show you on my phone.”

“Ummm….”

“Okay.” He laughed. “No problem. I understand. I’ll give you the executive summary for an average day, quote, unquote.

“I work nine hours a day. Monday through Friday, of course, with holidays off, all that. With commuting, I’m gone about eleven hours a day. I sleep about seven. That’s eighteen hours. So I’m awake and at home about six hours a day.

“Since I’m awake about seventeen hours a day, I decided that I average about nine hundred forty words an hour. I decided to call it a thousand. So I spoke about six thousand words a day at home. I figured that they hear about half of what I say. Three thousand words. They pay attention to about fifteen hundred. So, I’ve reduced what I speak at home to about a thousand words.”

“You speak a thousand words in six hours?”

“Yep.”

“But don’t the same rates hold? If you’re saying a thousand words, aren’t they hearing just half of those, and so on?”

“Oh, no.” He grinned. “Now, because I don’t talk much at home, they pay more attention to when I do.”

“That’s all pretty cynical, isn’t it?”

“Cynical? Or honest?” His grin turned rueful and his gaze turned inward. “Truthfully, I think they still pay attention to about half of what I say at home, if I’m honest. I think I’d rather be talking more and ignored, but I see them tune me out when I open my mouth.”

Shrugging, he lifted his beer bottle toward his mouth. “It is what it is.”

4

Funny to Think

Next month will mark the end of the second year of working on the Incomplete States quadrilogy. I hope to finish writing the fourth book in the series soon. At least, I sense the end feels near. Then I’ll have a beta version of all four books in the series.

Then the work begins, yeah, the real work. The creative writing part, hell, that’s fun and easy. Just turn your mind lose, and then tidy it up so it resembles correct written English and aligns with everything else written until then – to the best of my memory. I know from previous novels that I’ve finished that, in two years of writing these four books, I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve written. In fact, novel writing often feels like I’m a channel, a conduit through which the words and ideas flow. I write without remembering large swaths. That’s why the work begins after the beta versions are completed. Hidden in these four books are dead-ends and roundabouts, wandering paths and cliffs. Motivations have been established, shifted, and challenged. Facts must be checked and confirmed.

So on completing four books and about a million words in two years, it’s staggering and funny to realize, the work is just beginning to take the books from beta to first drafts to final drafts to publication. 

Once I finish the fourth book’s beta version – I call them beta because they tie in so completely with one another, they’re not truly a draft until the ties are cleaned up, so they have all the major features, but they’re not complete — I’ll probably take a break and write something simpler. Fans have been asking, where is the next book in Life Lessons with Savanna mystery series. Those books are usually less than one hundred thousand words, and a lot easier to write and finish.

Another day of writing like crazy has to be stopped to attend to real life. I love the tension of this moment, stopping while writing, when so much remains to be written. Makes me eager to jump back into it.

4

Birthday Boy

Two seventeen was on the clock when Dee decided she would get up to wait. Rising, she walked downstairs with the slowness demanded of her diseased-ravaged ninety-year-old body, wheezing as she went. They said she’d beaten cancer, but it didn’t feel like it. Her feet and hips ached. So did her neck and her jaw. She could barely raise her right arm enough to dress. Drugs did nothing for that pain and movement any longer. They wanted to scrape the joint.

Turning on lights, she walked around the kitchen and dining room, looking out windows. It was dark, and she was alone. Although her eyes, mind, and body felt tired, sleep was like a Mega-millions lottery ticket this week. She’d cleaned the house, washed the bed linens, baked and cooked, and worried.

Prowling the kitchen, she regarded the black forest cake on the table. He’d told her that was his favorite once, so she always had one on hand, with candles. She didn’t know how old he was. He would never say. Based on his annual visits, he was sixty, but he’d been an adult on every visit, so he had to be older, didn’t he? Sometimes, he looked older. Once, he’d seemed like a very old man. His hair had been almost gone. What remained was gray and white. It’d been shocking.

Rubbing her face, she sighed. She was too tired to think. She’d been looking forward to this, but she also wanted it done. She wanted coffee, but for God’s sake, it was two in the morning. Once it was over, she’d want to sleep. Yes, but she felt so tired, maybe a little cup of decaf would help keep her alert. She didn’t want to fall asleep and miss him.

No, she would not miss him. That would be a first. If he came, he would wake her. If he didn’t come —

If he came, he would wake her, if he had the time. He was always so busy, busier every time. That’s what it seemed like.

And last time —

Leaning forward against the sink to hold herself up, she entered a reverie. Last time, he’d been in the worst condition that she’d ever seen. Blood all over him, and so gaunt, with disheveled hair. God. She’d wanted to hug and kiss him but the sight of him froze her.

“Peter. What happened to you?” she said. She scanned him with her nurse’s eyes for wounds and spotted several.

“War,” he said.

“War?” she said with shock. Recent news events bounced through her thoughts. “What war?”

He shook his head. “There’s not time for that.”

“But you’re hurt — ”

“I’m okay, Mom, don’t worry,” he said, but a wince crossed his face, turning into a grimace. “You should have seen the other guy. Seriously.”

“Your arm is bleeding,” she said, moving toward him. “So is your abdomen.”

Peter moved away from her. “I know. Stay back. I don’t want to get blood on you.”

“But you may have major internal injuries.”

“I know, but there’s not enough time for you to do anything, Mom. I’m going to be gone in a moment. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I just had to see you.”

“Why can’t you stay longer?”

He had not answered. Peter had disappeared.

So, she had little hope for this year that it would be a longer visit.

She’d read The Time-Traveler’s Wife when it was released. So much of that book was like her experience with her son. But when she’d mentioned it, he’d said, “No, it’s nothing like that. It might seem random, but your visits are part of a much larger timetable.”

“My visits.” The way he said that, she knew it had more meaning. “You’re the one visiting.”

He’d smiled. “It’s really too complicated to explain. This visit would need to be a lot longer.”

She closed her eyes against the press of pain. It had taken her years to accept Peter was real and that his visits were real. Poor little Peter had lived less than a month. That loss remained a jagged wound in her soul. His first visits —

Her Fitbit’s alarm buzzed, reminding her of the time. She’d set it at his birth time, two thirty-four A.M. He always showed up then. As she pressed the button to stop it, he said, “Hi, Mom.”

Dee started and turned. “Oh, Peter. You scared me.” She laughed. “Right on time.”

He looked great. He came to her and hugged her tight, giving her a kiss as she tried saying, “I didn’t know if you’d make it,” while kissing him back.

“I’ll always make it, Mom,” he said, releasing her.

She drew back. “Let me look at you.” Her eyes brimmed with pride. He was so tall and good-looking, with a lean and athletic body, and beautiful green eyes. It was the best he’d ever looked. He could be a movie star. “You have a beard.”

“I do?” He grinned at her. “When did that happen?”

Dee wasn’t sure if he joked.

Smiling at her, Peter said, “How are you feeling?”

She sighed. “Oh, I’m tired and old. I’m in constant pain.”

That’s not what she wanted to talk about. There wasn’t time for it.

“You want something to eat?” She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Do you have time to sit down?”

Regret spilled into his expression. “No, Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t have the time this year. I tried, but….” He sighed, looking tired.

At least he wasn’t wounded, or older than her. Remembering who he was and what day this was, she said, “Happy birthday, honey. I wanted to say that to you while you were still here.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking past her at the table. He grinned. “Is that black forest cake?”

Nodding, she smiled. “It’s your favorite.”

He nodded back. “Cut me a piece. I’ll take it with me.”

“Really?” she said. “Do we have time to for me to sing happy birthday first?”

“Only if you cut the cake while you sing,” he said, “and you sing really fast.”

She rushed to do so. “I put everything out, just in case there was time.” Picking up the knife, she sang, “Happy birthday — ”

She stopped as she looked for him.

He was gone.

“Happy birthday, son,” she said to the empty room. “Happy birthday.”

0

The Story Left Behind

I’d been watching him because of his motionless manner of waiting. Dressed in jeans and a long sleeved gingham shirt, he stood straight, feet apart, clutching his box. Others fiddled, fidgeted, looked around, and shifted. Some checked phones. Besides that, the other eight people in the post office line were women. He and I were the only men.

He looked about my age, and had short grey hair, but I didn’t know him. Equal parts of bewilderment and resignation seemed poured into the man.

“Next,” the clerk said.

The man walked up to the counter and put his large box onto it. The box didn’t seem to weigh much.  As the clerk slid the box onto the scale, the man said in a loud voice, “There are eleven items in this box. Nine of them are glass bottles or jars. There are jams and jellies, pancake syrup, blueberry infused balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. All of those can break. I think the only things that can’t break are the Branson Chocolates and the pancake mix. It’s a thank you gift for my brother. We stayed at his house last week. My wife picked everything out. She said he’d like them. I guess I believe her.”

The postal clerk said, “Is there any alcohol, flammable materials, lithium batteries, or hazardous materials?”

“No.”

“Do you want it insured?”

“Yes, I was told to insure it and get a tracking number.”

“How much do you want to insure it for?”

“Fifty dollars.”

The clerk pressed buttons and applied labels. “Thirty-one ninety-five.”

The man paid.

“Have a good weekend,” the men said to each other as the postal clerk handed the other a receipt.

Nodding, the man folded the receipt, slipped it into a pocket, and walked out with equal parts of bewilderment and resignation, leaving me to wonder about the story he was leaving behind.

0

Cat Day

I guess, to give it a start, it began with the cat.

The rest is backdrop. Setting. Background. This started with the cat and her kittens.

They were totally unanticipated. We were starting another football season. Done in by injuries, my team had finished second, losing in the Superbowl by two stinking points the year before.

Unfortunately, I lost to iBot. He’s the housebot. Thinking I’d be funny and play against casting, iBot has the most masculine personality among the bots. I also made him the most abrasive. So losing to him sucked. iBot isn’t a gracious winner. I guess I should say, wasn’t, since we’re talking about the past.

There were twelve of us, and the eleven bots. Our league was three divisions of four teams each. You played your division opponents twice, and each team out of the other divisions once, for an eleven-game regular season. Then we had the playoffs. Eight teams with the best records squared off.

Cat Day, as iBot officially named it, was the first day of the season. I thought I could take the Lombardi that year. We were playing by the 2030 rules. I had Ben Roethlisberger at QB (my Dad, before he was killed, used to tell me I was a big Roethlisberger fan when I was young), with Franco Harris (Grand Dad’s favorite) in the backfield, Mike Webster at Center (another of Grand Dad’s recommendations) and big Gronk at TE. I’d managed to add Alan Faneca. Wide receivers were Antonio Brown with Larry Fitzgerald in the slot. It was on defense where I’d improved, managing to add Ron Woodson, replacing Sherman, along with Troy Polamalu. I’d had enough money to get the 2010 version of Troy to go along with my 2009 version of James Harrison. I was set.

I’d settled into the Immersion Deck, opening day at Heinz under a gorgeous warm fall day. The crowd was roaring, my beer was cold, and my pizza was hot. TinBot’s Bengals, with Tom Brady under center, was my opponent. TinBot had finished last the previous season. He’d given up a lot to get Brady, although it was old Brady. I expected a good game.

They’d just placed the ball at the twenty when the alarms went off. iBot immediately roared, “Game’s starting. Shut that fucking alarm off.”

Arya said, “It’s an intruder alert. We can’t just turn it off. It must be investigated.”

“You’re fucking security,” iBot said. As Arya said, “I know who I am,” iBot finished, “Get it done, bot.”

“Game pause,” I said, as the only human, and the only one for which an intruder actually mattered. “Delay the starts until the alarm is resolved.”

While every bot except Arya cursed me, I brought up the security monitors. I figured this was a false alarm or malfunction.

“Where is it, Arya?” I said.

The interior cams caught her moving across the domescape. Drones overtook her.

“Don’t know yet, boss,” she said. She carried two weapons. The drones were armed, too. I pitied any intruders Arya might find.

The security net immediately pinpointed a breach back by a drain. That worried me. As the drones closed on the grassy place beneath a big black oak tree and hovered, their cameras picked up the cat.

“A cat,” I said.

“Yeah, we all have fucking eyes,” iBot said. “Thanks for the news report, egghead”

Protecting three kittens, the cat looked unafraid and ready to fight. The kittens looked like they were just a day or two old.

Arya arrived on the scene. She had her weapons ready. “Instructions,” she said.

“Nuke ’em,” iBot said. “The game’s waiting. Kill them and let the games begin.”

“No,” I said.

I had no need for a cat and kittens. I’m not an animal lover. I have livestock but that’s because I eat real food.

But I saw no reason to kill the cats. She looked like my first girlfriend’s cat. The girlfriend was Joy. The cat was Snuffy. Snuffy was male, though.

A cat with kittens in my sanctuary sowed a shitload of questions that required answers. Besides the breach, her presence meant something was going on outside of my fortress. Plus, being in the dome was one thing, but how had even reached it was almost as critical.

Shit. I didn’t say it, but I thought it about nine times in a row. I wasn’t going to start the football season that day. Not until I knew what the hell had happened to my security and what was going outside of my fortress.

So, see, that’s the day everything changed.

On Cat Day.

 

0

Salazin – Six

Salazin didn’t let me ponder his comment, “And maybe further.”

That was probably good, because I was about to ask him where he thought his ship could go. The Moon? Mars?

Winking again, Salazin said, “I have prepared a model for you. Just a concept.”

He gestured toward the door. As it opened, Salazin said, “Behold the Nautilaus.”

As Salazin said, “I had this prepared to scale to help you visual it,” a young woman led in a cart. What looked like an upside-down ship was on it. Two young men pushed and guided the cart from either side. The upside-down ship’s bottom was glossy black. The top was charcoal gray. A red band divided the top and bottom. Nautilaus was in script in that band.

Salazin said, “I know that you’re a visual person but that you struggle to imagine things. I hope this helps you.”

After parking the cart, the three people left. When the door closed, Salazin said, “What do you think, Dylan? Is it not amazing?”

I’d been wondering what I thought. “It doesn’t look inviting,” I said. “It looks sinister.”

I was thinking that his model looked ten feet long and half a foot wide. Before Salazin could reply, I said, “How tall would this thing be?”

“Twenty-four stories.”

“Twenty-four stories?” I grappled again with his planned vehicle’s size. “Ten miles long, a half mile wide, and twenty-four stories high?”

“No, from the red band,” Salazin said. “Sorry, it’s twenty-four stories from the red band. It would be a total of twenty-seven stories tall, but three of those stories are below the ground level.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Salazin was walking and talking, and pointing what I took to be a remote. Tuning out of my bewilderment to his words, I caught, “The top is dark now so that I can have the pleasure of revealing the interior to you.”

The gray top turned lighter, growing translucent and then transparent. When that happened, it displayed a delicate framework on the upper part. It also displayed rolling green hills, a blue lake or sea, and multiple roadways, paths, forests, fields, and buildings. Some of the buildings were clustered like small villages. I saw a golf course, swimming pools, a needle-like building, like Seattle’s Space Needle, and what looked like vineyards, orchards, a ranch with horses and cows….

There was so much to see and assimilate, I felt like my mind was fusing into numbness. Without realizing it, I’d stood and walked over to the model.

Ten miles long, twenty plus stories high, and half a mile wide.

I didn’t see anything that looked like it could be an engine.

I saw Salazin slip to a stop beside me. I could see his face. A grin split it.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think you’re crazy,” I said.

0

Salazin – Five

“Start again,” I said. “Let’s start again.”

Salazin was posed to listen.

I composed myself to think and speak. “Ten miles is a very long vessel.”

“Yes.”

“Why does it have to be so long?”

“Don’t think of it as just a vessel.”

I waited.

“Think of it as a destination, Dylan,” Salazin said. “Think of it as an exclusive island floating in the sky. Think of it as an exclusive destination. We will grow organic food and raised organic animals. We’ll serve them in our exclusive restaurants.”

“We’ll have more than one restaurant?”

“Yes, yes, why not? We will have an inland sea and luxury villas. And vineyards, wineries, and breweries. We will sell Nautilaus wine. Imagine it.”

“I’m trying to. Why call it Nautilaus?”

“Nautilaus is the perfect name. Nautilaus is associated with adventure and technology.”

“Maybe for you, but I think of exercise equipment.”

“No, no, not exercise equipment. Think of Jules Verne and Robert Fulton.”

“Robert Fulton?”

“Yes, yes, he named his steamboat the Nautilaus, and Jules Verne named his submarine after Fulton’s steamboat.”

“That’s another thing,” I said. “The Nautilaus is a submarine.”

“It is a masterpiece, Dylan. It is a luxury jewel, a vessel to fire imagination, inspire adventure, and embrace luxury. It’s mysterious and unique.”

“Fine.” I’d drop it for now. Salazin was smarter than me, and he’d thought about this more, so I was behind. I knew I’d probably give in soon, but it’s my custom not to be graceful about these things. Actually, it’s not my custom, but my nature. I think I get it from my parents, or maybe the whole damn clan. None of us surrender with grace. We fit to the bitter damn end. Come see us at the holidays, and you’ll understand.

“But ten miles seems extremely long,” I said.

“It needs to be so long for what it will have and be.”

“It won’t be able to land anywhere.”

“Yes, it will. It can land on the ocean. It can land in many other places.”

Salazin leaned in toward me. “Dylan, Dylan. Listen. I know that you must think about things before you say okay. I love that about you. I do.

“But, let me give you more to think about so we can hasten the moment when you say okay. Imagine a floating island that can travel anywhere in the world and be there in a matter of hours. Imagine living in a place isolated from war, disease, and pollution. Imagine being able to dine in a fine restaurant while watching a volcano in Hawaii explode, or floating over Antarctica or the North Pole, watching the glaciers break off and float away. Imagine being able to go to the best place to see meteor showers, eclipses, and the Northern Lights. Imagine the greatness of such a vessel. This is why it’ll be more than a vessel, but will be enshrined as the ultimate destination. As a destination, it can be anywhere.”

“On Earth.”

Salazin winked. “And maybe further.”

0

Salazin – Four

Mouth agape, I stared at Salazin, looking for a sense of humor. He had one but it didn’t seem present at this time.

“What did you say?” I said.

“I said your ship will be ten miles long.”

“Miles.”

“Yes.”

“Ten miles.”

“Yes, ten miles.” Looking serious, Salazin picked up his beer and watched me.

He didn’t drink much alcohol. I never saw him actually finish beer. I always thought he pretended to drink to put me at ease.

Well, not always. At first, I thought he drank like I did. About a week into our friendship, I began to realize that he didn’t.

“Ten miles long?” I said. The words began to gain substance. “Ten miles long?” I was searching for references. I ran two miles a day. This ship would be five times as long as my daily run. “How wide will it be?”

“One half of a mile wide.”

While that sounded more acceptable, it still seemed unbelievable. A half a mile wide would be an impressive length. Ten miles…ten miles was fucking unbelievable.

Ten miles by half a mile. The ship would be long and narrow. “The engines for this,” I said.

Salazin watched me.

“They have to be enormous,” I said.

“No.” Salazin shook his head. “I told you. <TK> has developed new technology.”

Yes, he’d mentioned her before. “Right, I remember. You always said you would introduce me to her.”

“Yes, and I will. Her travel has been delayed.”

Her travel has been delayed. That statement seemed innocuous back then. Now it seemed like it was heavy with weight. Back then, I thought, airlines, flights, cancellations, weather. Now, thinking, her travel has been delayed, I think, from where?

From what planet?

By what means?

0

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