Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I know it’s another Princess and the Pea complaint, but don’t you hate it when the ‘net is so slow that you can click a link, go make a cuppa coffee, drink half of it, select new music, peruse the newspaper, and then return to the computer in time to see the page load?
These things always trigger corollary suspicions: is it just my provider, or this location, a flawed router or modem, a computer issue, DDoS attack or virus, the web site, the browser…?
Bah. Too damned spoiled, aren’t I?
Picking up his computer bag, he called, “I’m off. See you later.”
“Okay,” she replied. “Have a good write.”
Closing the door, he headed out for the street and thought, She turned write into a noun. That isn’t right.
Swinging has bag onto his back, he thought, I hope I have a good write. This week’s been strong with good writes.
Striding down the street and looking up at the sky, he thought, I hope she didn’t jinx me.
Hulley paused from writing his novel. He’d seen and finished a long scene, all praise the muses. Once that was done, he needed to collect where he was and what was to be done.
Scanning the other patrons and front door, he picked up his coffee. Half remained, but cold as iced-tea. Time? Been here sixty-five minutes. Sipping the coffee, he continued peering around, debating options, choices, and plans. Plenty of time remained but his writing energy seemed as spent as a summer storm. It’d been a good day of writing, but —
His eyes picked up on the opening front door, and then his brain shouted, “Holy shit.” His brain’s declaration slammed the rest of his being into shocked stillness. Through the front door came a pale white man, about six three, narrow-framed, with thin white hair and an ancient poets’ beard. He wobbled like he could be tipsy or suffering from a balance issue. Dressed in ragged, soiled denims on this ninety-plus day with a yellow Polo shirt, a Cubs hat, and aviator styled sunglasses, he didn’t fit in. Hulley gagged on recognition: Breech.
It couldn’t be Breech. He almost laughed at the suggestion. It was too freaking insane. Breech was his fucking character, star of the last scene, a gray-blue antagonist traveling the west coast in his big 1970 Chevy Suburban, hunting and killing kidnappers and rapists. Breech couldn’t be here.
With rising alarm, Hulley conducted a lengthy double-take of the coffee shop. Gone was the tidy suburbanized business with its lit glass food cases and soft beige and blue walls, replaced by a cramped, smaller, and darker place, an old home re-purposed as a cafe. It wasn’t that Breech was here; it was that he was there.
Breech strolled past his table like a spinning top losing energy. Although the man wore sunglasses, Hulley felt Breech rake him with the predatory blue eyes he’d seen with his mind too many times. Breech always thought he knew his quarry by the way they reacted to his scrutiny. The guilty stayed relaxed but the innocents were unnerved.
Slapping his coffee mug down, Hulley gulped down a lump that could’ve been a rock. He didn’t know what was going to happen or what had happened to him, but it looked like the next scene was beginning.
Sucking in a deep breath, he began typing. What else could a writer do?
A couple flirted, giggled, and kissed on a blanket under the cemetery pines while a woman sat on a towel, eating an apple and reading, in a splash of sunshine twenty yards away. Dozens of grave markers from them, a trio of fawns bucked and gamboled. A pair of does ate while a grave majestic buck chewed in thought. A gray squirrel, egged on by cawing crows and jeering jays, chased another squirrel around and up trees and over headstones as a flock of wild turkeys tsked, sighed, and tutted.
It was a lively place to be, in the cemetery that day.
It seems like a surprising twist, but it probably isn’t. It’s probably one of those oft-experienced, universally known, but rarely mentioned phenomena of life. I will mention it in passing because it strikes me now.
Every night brings something different that I miss from the past. Tonight brings memories of sitting around, listening to music with my friends. I’m listening to some old live Clapton and remembering times and places, but it’s such a solo act.
Yet…this is how it is for most of us. We slip from childhood to our teenage years, to first loves and first jobs, to relationships and marriage, and then find ourselves looking back, remembering, think, and wondering.
I guess it’s not that surprising, or a twist, after all.
I spread the good news to my friends. “Hey, the local WalMart supposedly has the latest manscaping products in stock, and it’s supposed to be the best!”
They, twelve retired professionals ranging in age from sixty to eighty-five, responded.
“What?”
“WalMart!”
“Manscaping.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I was not put off. I’d already talked to them about anal bleaching. They often overlook these fine points of pop-culture. I’m the chosen one to educate them.
Many immediately said, “We don’t shape at WalMart.”
I said, “You might need to change your ways, if you want the latest manscaping products suitable for urbane gents such as as yourselves.”
Bill laughed. “Manscaping! I don’t have the eyesight for that kind of thing. I’d be afraid of what I’m clipping.”
“Get your wife to help you,” I suggested. “You can make it a romantic evening.”
“A romantic evening of manscaping?” Joe asked.
“Yes. Light some candles and have a few glasses of wine, and then strip down, lay back on the bed, and let her groom you.”
Bill roared. “That’d be a bloody mess. Her eyesight is worse than me.”
Andy nodded. “Enough said. No one sees me naked and I’m not interested in landscaping myself just for the joy of it.”
“Someone change the subject,” Chris said.
“Hey,” I said, “did you hear about the new waxing place in town, just for men?”
He was reading Big Sky by Kate Atkinson, and enjoying it. His laptop was on in front of him on the desk, and the television was playing an old movie, Jumanji. Sunday evening multi-tasking at his finest, in his opinion, reaching for another piece of Colby and a cracker.
His shifting position let him see her in her armchair to his left. She was giving him a look. Having been together for fifty years, he’d developed insights into her looks. Although many would see it as outwardly little different from her other looks, small clues in lips, eyes, and her head’s posture led him along a diagnostic path that finished, she’s about to register a complaint.
A bright smile was flashed her way. “What’s up?” The cheese and cracker found his mouth. It was so good, he reached for more.
“You need a haircut, babe.”
He shrugged, prepared to return to his book. “You’re probably right.” She was, but he wasn’t going to be so bald about it.
“I don’t understand your attitude toward your hair. Have you seen yourself ? Your hair is an unkempt mess.”
“Unkempt mess, as opposed to a kempt mess? Is kempt a word? I should google that.”
“You look like a homeless bum.”
“Isn’t that redundant? If you have a home, can you — ”
“Don’t change the subject. My point is that your hair is a mess. What’s with you and your hair?”
“Well, my philosophy is simple.” Raising a glass of pinot noir in her direction, he smiled. “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”
She was not amused.
Michael Seidel, writer 