Top Floor

Top Floor

A short story in two voices
 

This is a great building. The kind that’s an office building built over the historic façade that used to be here before progress, you know, made its big move. I smile about the metaphor this drops for me on the day of my interview here. My mother is walking through the business people, navigating their briefcases and lattes, like she does it all the time. She doesn’t. She works at the hospital. Middle management. Billing people for appendectomies and Botox.

She joins me at the table. I have a small latte in front of me. I don’t want to be all bloaty for the interview, so I sized down. “Hi mom,” I say. She hates when I don’t address her. My best friend in the world could come and sit with me and all’s he’d get would be chin raise. But mom needs words. Complete words. Today of all days, I’m going to remember to speak in complete sentences made of complete words, ’cause that’s how they like it. And I want them to like me.

“Hi Jeremy,” she says. “Are you ready?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Why is it important to you that you work at Hasken Pilter?” She is quizzing me, making sure I’m in the right frame of mind for the interview. Shit, you’d swear she thinks I got faded for this.

“Because Hasken Pilter is the number one commodities firm in the western hemisphere, and I’m a perfect fit.”

“You can’t just say you’re a perfect fit, you have to demonstrate it.”

“Mom.”

“Jeremy.”

“Mom, it’ll be fine.”

“Even if it isn’t, an interview at a company like this is great experience. It’ll help you if there’s a next interview.”

“Way to keep it positive,” I say, and hold my latte cup up like I’m toasting her wisdom.

~~~~~

Can you believe he would come to this interview wearing a green dress shirt? I swear, if he didn’t live in my basement all the time, I wouldn’t be able to pick my son out of a police lineup. A blue suit and a green shirt and tie. And that ridiculous red beard. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could actually grow one, but he’s only 23, so you know, it’s patchy.

He’s drinking a coffee too. The last thing he needs is to need to go pee and end up all fidgety. I wish you were here with us today. You’d be so proud. Patchy beard or not, our son has grown up smart and handsome and kind. He reminds me of you, even though he looks like my side of the family. Days like this make me miss you even more than usual.

I look at my watch and say to Jeremy, “We should get going up.” He stands and smiles at me. Big teeth behind a moustache that needs a trim. I reach over and pick a fuzzy off his suit collar.

We walk across the throng of passersby. They are walking along the corridor. We need to walk across it to get to the elevators. I’m doing it like I’m playing Frogger. “Excuse me, sorry,” and so on. Jeremy is tall and confident and just glides through. I end up following him. In the elevator, I say, “Remember, don’t talk over me in there. I have more experience with this.”

“Sure mom,” he says. It sounds a little like a question.

~~~~~

These elevators are awesome. I want this job even more now. They are real wood with a slat of mirror down each side of the back. I check my teeth for iggies, but I’m good. The wood panels tell the world that Hasken Pilter doesn’t give a fuck whether someone carves their name in them. They’ll just get replaced the next day. Ad infinitum.

It’s a long ride up. My ears pop a little, so I fake a yawn to bring my hearing back to above-water mode.

“Didn’t you get enough sleep last night?” mom asks.

“My ears were popping.”

“Oh. Okay then.” She checks her hair in the slat on her side. Quick, like I’m not supposed to notice.

The elevator doors open and it’s not the usual hallway. They open directly into the offices of Hasken Pilter. Well, the reception area of Hasken Pilter. It says so, in their dramatic font above the beautiful woman in the telephone headset. She says, “Hasken Pilter, please hold.” And then says the same thing. Another three times. She smiles at me and holds up a finger to show she’ll be right with us.

“Hi, welcome to Hasken Pilter,” she says. She’s talking to me. Mom answers.

“We’re here to see Ms. Davidson. We’re Jeremy Peters.”

“Sure, I’ll let Ms. Davidson’s assistant know you’re here. Please have a seat.”

~~~~~

Did you see her roll her eyes? It was slight but it was there. I don’t care what the receptionist thinks. Right? This interview is too important to Jeremy to let him do it by himself. A company like Hasken Pilter would see him coming a mile away and would lock him into indentured servitude. He’s 178th in his graduating class. That’s pretty high praise from a top school.

A young lady in a blue power suit with a baby blue blouse joins us. “Jeremy?” she asks. He’s the only man in the waiting area. He stands, and I stand with him. He shakes her hand. His firmness looks fine. I shake her hand too and say, “Felicity Peters,” I’m Jeremy’s mom.

“Nice to meet you,” the assistant in the power suit and the Walter Steiger shoes says. She doesn’t say her name. “Right this way.” She leads we follow.

We reach Ms. Davidson’s office. She’s just finishing a call. She smiles and tells whomever that she’ll call them back. “Please come in.” The three of us go in.

~~~~~

The first thing I notice about Ms. Davidson is that she’s full on writing with a Mont Blanc. I think that’s the first thing I’m getting when I get a cheque. A fat black one with the big white snowflake on the top. I’ll get my signing on with that.

We stand for a bit while her assistant comes in with another chair for mom.

Then we sit. Ms. Davidson says, “Welcome to Hasken Pilter. Would you like anything, coffee, water?” Mom and I say that we don’t. The assistant leaves and closes us in.

“Thank you for inviting us today,” mom says. Ms. Davidson smiles and looks at me.

“So Jeremy, you did well in your first semester. How’s this one going?”

I take a slow deliberate breath. Mom will be rating it, so I make sure it’s there for at least my first answer. “It’s going well,” I say. “I’m currently 178 in the graduate class. That should come up after finals.”

“You’re expecting good finals?” She smiles and starts to note something with the Mont Blanc in a leather bound book. Leather, for interview notes. This place is awesome.

Mom says, “He is going to do great on his finals. The last time I spoke with his professors they assured me there was nothing to be concerned about.” Ms. Davidson smiles again. Writes nothing.

“Tell me Jeremy, why would you like the analyst position at Hasken Pilter?” I see mom smile. She’d predicted this one and she’s proud.

“Hasken Pilter is a top floor firm and I am 178 in my class and climbing. Together, we’ll be everything I need to learn and excel.” Ms. Davidson writes for a considerable amount of time. Nailed it.

Several more questions have passed. I’m doing marvellously. Ms. Davidson is clearly feeling my vibe. The only thing I can’t figure is why mom hasn’t brought up my starting salary yet. I’m a little worried that she’s going to drop the ball on this one, and I’ll be starting way too low. We should have worked out a set of signals.

~~~~~

Holy Mother of God. Did he just tell her that he’ll be an even better fit at Hasken Pilter once marijuana is legalized because he’s used to working hard and delivering under the influence at school? He must have been stoned when he picked out his suit!

I have no idea why he keeps looking at me. It’s like he expects me to say something, but all I want to do is cry. This is my best poker face. I hope it’s holding. Luckily for me, Ms. Davidson doesn’t seem to notice, and she doesn’t have any questions for me. I’m hiding in plain sight.

Then Jeremy says, “Mom thinks I should be asking for a company car too. What do you think of that Elsa?”

I missed the part where they got on a first name basis. From the look on her face, I think Ms. Davidson did too.

Baseball

Baseball - A short story by P. Andrew Power

He hadn’t been taught that he needn’t slide into first base.  He was safe regardless.  Around me on the bleachers was clapping.  It was half-hearted, lugubrious applause as opposed to uproarious celebration.  An eight year-old being safe at first, moreover incorrectly, didn’t rank much more.  “Good job David,” decreed someone most likely with a close familial relationship to David.  David’s job had been reasonable, accidentally making contact through a terrible check-swing that dribbled the ball up the third baseline.  Once the third baseman and the short-stop had concluded their tussle over the ball, rolling around and forgetting at least momentarily that they were supposed to work together, David was already standing on the first base bag, dusting his canvas pants unnecessarily sullied by his foot-first slide.  He beamed proudly.  I wiped my forehead.  It was hot in the sunshine.

The pitcher was a tall kid with red hair and freckles.  The kind of kid a perfectly reasonable adult would be comfortable cheering against because an adult would know that a kid like this spent his spare time pushing other kids from their bicycles or some such.  He was heavier than the other boys too, an advantage he would certainly use on the playground, throwing elbows during a game of red-rover.  I formed an immediate dislike of the pitcher.  The ball made its way back to him, from the third baseman who’d won it.  The pitcher waited as the umpire tied a sneaker for the next batter, a skinny kid with glasses who apparently didn’t know how to tie shoes at the age of eight.  David shifted back and forth, from one foot to the other atop the bag, bored with the waiting.

The umpire finished his assistance and circled around to retake his position leaning over the catcher like a fat man pilfering french-fries from an unsuspecting toddler at the supper table.  “Play ball!” he said, as if there was another option.  The pitcher crinkled his nose and squinted his eyes in determination serving mostly to concentrate his freckles into menacing, orange cheek blotches.  He rolled the ball over a few times in his glove then reared back and chucked it forcefully into the top of the back-stop.  “Ball,” demurred the umpire.  I stretched my eyelids by opening my eyes widely and then returned them to their relaxed, yet open, position.  The catcher walked after the ball like he would a kitten that’s left its box.

Once retrieved, the ball was thrown back toward the pitcher landing bouncelessly four feet in front of him.  He sauntered to it, noticing without concern that David was considering stealing second.  The red-head squinted at him in a manner that made it known he’d better not.  David was doing his best to entice a throw to first, which most likely wouldn’t be caught and then stealing second would be an actual possibility.  David danced back and forth along the baseline nearest first but on its way to second, waving his hands randomly.  The pitcher shook his head slowly in a dismissive manner and took up his position with his right foot in the hole against the rubber.  I cannot explain why David did not steal second when the ball was crashing into the top third of the backstop, other than to theorize that he enjoyed tormenting the pitcher more than he did baseline advancement.  I resolved to cheer silently for David.  He wasn’t my grandson.  My grandson was the only boy in the game who would cause me to clap or call encouragement.  I was here for him.  The rest were scenery; extras.

I sipped four-dollar lemonade from a plastic bottle.  I wanted it to last all four innings.

Three more uncoordinated swings and the bespectacled batter was retired to his bench and bulk bag of sunflower seeds.  I watched as he took a generous swig from his water bottle, clearly parched from his three swings and his statuesque observance of the first pitch into the backstop.  David walked back and forth along his end of the first-to-second baseline.  “Over here!” the first basemen called holding his glove well forward.  The red-head ignored him and looked in at the next batter menacing his cheek blotches as he did. 

The next batter was a girl with a bright yellow ponytail hanging from the back of her oversized, shockingly fuchsia batting helmet.  She smiled happily to the pitcher; almost knowingly.  It was possible they went to school together, or lived on the same street, or were cousins.  It was clear that the red-head didn’t intend to return the happy-to-see-you sentiment.  He redoubled his squint.  David walked back to first base.  He was not permitted to take a lead.  Eight year olds do not take leads in this league.  The yellow haired girl kept smiling.

“Strike,” called the umpire as her first pitch breezed across the plate.  She didn’t move, the bat resting casually upon her shoulder, her smile unaffected.  The yellow haired girl was important to me.  If she were to strike out, it was less likely that my grandson would make it up to bat this inning.  He was currently on the bench with the bespectacled kid, sharing sunflower seeds and testing batting helmets by smacking each other’s with open palms.   The helmets were clearly effective as Peter giggled as the kid with the bulk bag of seeds smacked him.

The yellow-haired girl had amassed another strike and a ball.  With two strikes against, she was smiling less.  “Let’s go Shelly,” came a call from the bleachers.  I agreed, indeed, let’s go Shelly.  There were three more batters between Shelly and Peter.  The red-head stared in and reared back and plunked Shelly in the shoulder. I would have thought he did it on purpose but he wasn’t good enough to hit what he wanted, including the strike zone or a yellow-haired girl.  “Time,” called the umpire.  The game stopped for a bit as the coach made his way to the batter’s box to ask Shelly if she was okay.  Shelly was fighting back the tears that hadn’t already slipped down her cheeks waiting to be smeared by her baseball t-shirt sleeve.  She nodded, handed her bat to her coach, and walked joylessly to first base.  David was pushed to second base without drama or excitement.  He was now eying third base as a thievery prospect.

With the yellow-haired Shelly sobbing on first base, and only one out, there was an improved chance that Peter would get to bat.  The first base coach was talking to the yellow-haired girl, telling her that it was a good thing she was on first because the team needed base runners.  I agreed.  Shelly looked like she would prefer to eat sunflower seeds and not have a bruise tomorrow.  “That-a-girl Shelly,” the woman who I presumed to be her mother said.  I shifted.  The aluminum bleacher was hurting my keister.  When I did, the hot bleacher burnt the palms of my hands.  I clutched the four dollar lemonade to cool them.  I took another sip.  It was still the top of the first.

David bounced around between second and third, enticing an errant throw.  “David, back on second.  You can’t take a lead,” his coach said loudly from the bench.  The coach then smiled and said something to the third base coach and the smile was shared.  The dancing irritated the red headed pitcher.  When he turned with the ball in his glove he could see peripherally the spasmodic movements of David mocking him and daring him to throw the ball in his direction.  It was thus far my one source of entertainment, interrupted temporarily by the coach sending him back to second.

Three more batters until Peter.  One out, two on.  David and the sobbing, yellow-haired girl.  The pitcher looked in and the batter chewed gum in reply.  Squint.  Throw.  Crack.  The ball rolled into right field, with David being waved home and the yellow-haired girl running past second and on toward third with her arms flailing wildly as if bees were nesting in her fuchsia headdress.  Two more batters.  The pitcher stamped his foot and held his glove behind his neck with both hands.  His dismay brought a small flicker of joy to me.  I disliked his arrogance and his demeanour.  I knew how kids like him grew up to become border guards or cops or high school principals just so they could keep sticking their thumbs into the ribs of those who couldn’t fight back because of the system we’re stuck in.

Peter was in the hole.  Runners at first and third.  The yellow-haired girl was on third, and number 10 who’d had the nice RBI single was on first mostly because his first base coach made him keep it to a single.  A new batter was up, number 5.  He batted left, so his back was mostly to me.  David was standing in front of his bench, still dancing.  I celebrated his run with another sip of lemonade.  The sun was beginning to work at the exposed skin on my forearms.  I should have worn sunblock.

The kid on deck was swinging a wooden bat, because it was heavier than the aluminum one he’d be batting with.  The old bat was a suitable warm-up for a batter intending to use a new one.  In my time we’d put a lead donut around the bat and swing that to warm up our shoulders and hips.  I supposed they didn’t think children using lead was a good idea and they were probably right.  It wasn’t difficult to imagine David gnawing on the warm-up donut.  Especially if someone called it a donut.

Number 5 struck out.  Two outs.  Runners at first and third.  Peter on deck standing in the on-deck circle swinging the heavier wooden bat and watching his teammate facing the red headed pitcher.  The menacing look, the blotched freckles, a high inside pitch.  “Ball,” said the umpire.  There were few redeeming features to this red head kid.  High and inside again.  “Ball.”  Peter watched on, swinging, waiting, swinging.  “Ball three,” the umpire said.  The pitcher took a little walk around the mound to calm himself down.  He looked in, threw low and away, and walked Number 5 in four pitches. 

The bases were loaded and Peter was up.  I was terribly hot, but I’d stopped sweating.  I sipped a sip of lemonade and smiled at Peter, who waggled his fingers at me.  I nodded to him to impart my entire baseball prowess onto him with a single gesture, which of course isn’t possible.   He walked to the batter’s box and wiggled his feet into the sandy dirt like I’d shown him.  He bent his knees and pulled the bat back and waited.  The red-head threw, and Peter swung at the first pitch.  I’d taught him to swing at the first pitch.  It’s the one the pitcher would be most focussed on and therefore it would be most likely to cross the plate in a somewhat hittable manner.

He hit a solid grounder into centre field, the ball rolling to the left of the centre fielder who was out of position.  Peter ran to first and was on his way to second.  He’d knocked in two runs.  I stood on my bleacher and clapped, feeling some of the blood making its way back into my legs.  The centre fielder threw the ball in to second, where the pitcher caught it by stepping in front of his own second baseman.  He tagged Peter far too high.  “Hey!” I hollered.  “Out,” the umpire said.  Peter fell backward having been hit in the face by a larger boy.  One with red hair and freckles and belly fat.  I was angry.  I took up my lemonade and ambled down the bleachers intending to make my way to the bench to see if Peter was okay.  His head was hanging so I couldn’t tell if he was hurt or simply dismayed.  I scowled at the red head and the umpire and the world in general.

My chest tightened when I reached the ground.  I was finding it more difficult to breathe.  At once I knew I was in distress.  It had to be my heart.  I preferred it to be heat-stroke, so I took another sip of my lemonade.  It still had to last three and a half more innings.  I fell to the ground onto my backside, clutched my chest and sat there watching Peter walk to where David was waiting with a high-five.  I groaned.  The people on the bleachers were starting to notice my dying of something more than heat-stroke.  I couldn’t raise my lemonade to my mouth to convince them.  I needed to lie down.  “I’ll be okay,” I said to the random parenting faces around me.  “He’s having a heart attack,” one of them labeled it.

The pitcher started to yell.  He was having a conniption.  At first I thought he was angry with having given up the runs with two outs.  Then I determined he was angry that I’d disrupted his game with my death theatrics.  He yelled, “I know where it is!” and he ran off toward the school discarding his glove and his hat flew up driven off by the wind of running on its brim.  I fell back and the parenting faces were replaced by darkness and then light and then a backlit figured obscured. 

My dead wife looked at me first with compassion but then her face changed.  She squinted and pursed her lips and shook her head “no”.  Then she had freckles, which she never had in life.  They blended together into orange blotches that confirmed her disagreement with whatever I’d done to upset her.  I went through the list.  I took out the garbage.  I gave up smoking.  I stopped going to the bar after work – mostly because I’d stopped working twenty years ago.  Then she was gone and the white light was replaced by the cyan sky.  The coach of the other team was kneeling next to me, fiddling with a yellow box.

“Did it work?” the pitcher asked?

I looked around at the group of parents and mingled baseball teams, all faces staring at me.  “Grandpa!” Peter shouted.

South African Diamond Mine 1982

We walked along the base of the ancient mountain that was now mostly worn into a hill, out from under which underpaid men died digging diamonds.  Some of them died digging them out.  Some of them died being caught in the act of stealing them.  We walked past young men, presumably of the army, protecting their government’s diamond mine with only their machine guns and superiority.  One of them nodded at me and I had the absent-minded notion that Harder Security should scorch the area and abscond with the loot.  I winked at the soldier, who smiled back – human after all.

I decided to join the decade and Twitter

@pAndrewPower

On assigning blame...

 It was the goat’s fault really.  He was carrying the rifle in his burden pack.

My Amazon Author Page

My Amazon author page

Ottawa Independent Writers lists GRiP

OIW Books

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Mother is a crazy foreshadower

In those days I took my midday meal with Mother.  She had degraded before our eyes.  In the time it took to build the Barn, and all of its hidden subfloors, Mother had forgotten how to dress and feed herself.  We converted the parlour of the house into her bedchamber and had the handymen build a door into it off the main hallway, where otherwise someone could peer into her room from there as they passed.  She had privacy in a parlour that was made to look just like her bedchamber upstairs.  Her bed was placed where the pile of round, throwing stones once was.

The handymen also installed a main floor water closet and tub where Mother could bathe without needing to climb stairs.  The foreman proffered the idea when I was directing him to replicate her bedchamber in the parlour.  It was a stroke of genius, because within a month there was no possible way Mother could climb stairs.  A month following that, Francie and I made our bedchamber where Mother’s once was.

That was a fact that the older nurse didn’t favour.  She took up the matter with Doctor Greene who took the matter up with me.  Apparently it was inappropriate for Francie to take up house with me while providing care to Mother.  I remember the good Doctor had trouble broaching the subject with me.  I listened to him bumble and moan for a moment, thinking he had more bad news about mother.  I was relieved when he said, “Nurse Farrington has an issue with your relationship with Francine.  She believes I should too.”

As Dembe noted, I had become more and more like my father, for good and bad.  “Replace her,” I said.

“But, I…”

“Do you share her misgivings?” I asked.

“I am too well compensated to have misgivings,” he said.

“Then replace her, and make sure I don’t see her again.”

And he did.  I never saw cranky nurse Farrington again.  On the day Dembe accepted the name Harder Security, a new nurse was feeding mother her midday meal.  She was in her early twenties, beautiful, and African.  She smiled shyly at me as I sat with her as Mother ate.  She listened intently to me as I spoke to my Mother about the weather, the meal, and the progress we were making with the winery.  Each time I looked at the beautiful Ghanaian nurse, she smiled.  It was fairly obvious that the good Doctor Greene intended to prostitute as many pretty nurses as it took to keep his fairly rich compensation package.  It never occurred to me to set him straight.

“The vintner says it looks like the majority of the vines can be saved,” I said.  She looked at me and chewed her food that the pretty Ghanaian was spooning into her.  It looked to be runny porridge or rice pudding.  Whatever it was, chewing appeared to be redundant.  “The Barn is finished,” I said.  She looked at the nurse who feed her another glop of mush.  “It seems Dembe has invited the first guest to review our operation,” I said.  She said nothing, chewed, and looked vacant – most likely anything she was seeing was in her mind’s eye.  “Hopefully he will become a customer.  Dembe is hopeful, but I’m not sure.  I haven’t spoken with the man yet.”  She smiled for no reason.  No reason related to what I was saying at least.

“Have you spoken to Jeremy?” she asked.  I sat there confused, and said nothing.  I had discovered the hard way that she preferred me interloping in her delusions than interrupting them with logic or current events. 

“I haven’t for a while,” I said by way of compromise.

“He is planning to go away to university.  You should think about going with him.  This is no place for a young man.  Too many awful things are going to start happening.”

“That is good advice Mother,” I said.  The young nurse smiled at me.  I smiled back, politely rather than flirtatiously.  The last thing I wanted was to anger Francie by creating the potential for any kind of triangle – perceived or real.

“America is where to go, before war comes.”

“Indeed.”

“Listen to me!”  Her eyes were bulging and gruel and spittle was running out of the corner of her mouth.  “I don’t want you to die.  I need to tell you not to die.”  She started to yell and work herself into a lather, “Don’t die.  Don’t die.  Timothy, don’t die on me and leave me here.”  The nurse stood up and did what she could to console her.  It made matters worse.  I noticed how short the nurse’s uniform was and how long her legs were.  She was bending to console Mother and wipe her face and was just nearly reaching the end of the uniform’s ability to preserve her modesty.  It diverted my attention from my yelping, thrashing mother, who wasn’t my dignified, stoic mother anymore.

“I’m not going to die,” I said calmly.

“You’re already dead,” she whispered.  It put a chill into my soul.

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Videos I watch that I find inspire me to write

I'll post these as I remember them and as I discover new ones.  Feel free to make suggestions. 

An Evening With Kevin Smith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6V-L-ZZt3I&list=PL42CD625F5F800B18
Mostly about film making, but the creative process is similar for me.  Some offensive language, so if you're just a kid, don't click the link.

Also of Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith on writing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSfawJHLq4 

George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t610qKLlfs4 
Definitely do not click the link if you're a kid.  George is a talented potty-mouth.

 George RR Martin on Strombo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHfip4DefG4

Aaron Sorkin on Daily Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQK_K2pnS7A

Writing creepy stuff...

My work is usually creepy.  I like to make readers experience the story - and creepy works well.  Everyone I know tends to worry about where the inspiration for dark things comes from.  Fiction is fictitious.  A writer using creepy is like a painter using Payne's Grey.  It's just a tool in the kit.  I had a creative writing prof who insisted that for my last assignment I couldn't write a horror or thriller or creepy-at-all short story.  I wrote the story, but it was missing a color.  

About the next book - Crutch

They say write what you know.  So my novel is doing this instead...

The WWII East Africa Campaign
Toughened men of various nationalities arrived and spirited me away by caravan through what is now Tanzania and into northern Kenya where my father was waiting.  Father decided that we would be going over land, by the inland route and not the coastal route.  Passage by sea was possible, but in 1940 ships were being boarded and searched by both sides, if they weren’t simply bombed indiscriminately from the sky above.  The inland route wasn’t an easy trip in those days, not that it is even now.  We took about two months riding on horseback or in carts, sweating, getting harassed and eaten and infected by tsetse flies, and fighting amongst ourselves as we hid from the Axis troops that we knew were out there and which would be looking for groups like ours.  We must have looked like the French Foreign Legion with our white faces with a smattering of African and Indian and Arab ones.  When we set out, we were thirty men strong.  If our rag-tag group of armed men on horseback and meagre carts was spied by Axis troops or planes, we’d surely be fired upon.  They’d assume that we were up to no good, and from their perspective they’d be correct.

... 

 Tsetse flies
There was a discussion of turning back, but there was a feeling that we were in the middle of them and turning in any direction would make no difference other than to keep us from our destination for longer.  And everyone in our party held me specifically responsible for our being in the middle of this scourge.  If it weren’t for me and my boyhood desire to play war, none of them would be in this predicament.   Of course I had no desire to play war, boyish or otherwise, but Horst was correct: it didn’t really matter.  This was my fault.  The sounds of the hyena that were following us, waiting, reminded me.  The vultures that circled above us predicted an unfriendly future.  We rode on for what seemed like forever.

... 

 Kilimanjaro
While the mountain had lost its majesty for me, when we came across a lazy herd of giraffes I was again captivated by life.  I had seen giraffes before, but they seemed to be what my despondent psyche needed.  I was calmed and comforted by them as we sauntered by on our horses.  They lazily flicked their ears at us and chewed leaves and didn’t pay us much in the way of consideration.  Dembe and Lebna didn’t give the giraffes a second look.  It would seem that all manner of things had lost their majesty for those men.

... 

Leaving sleeping cats lie 
I took the coffee gratefully and drank as if it was the cure for terror.  It was marvelous.  I had another cup and then went and urinated next to one of the baobabs.  Then I saw the lion.  He was lying there lazy and lifted his head a little when he heard my stream hit the ground.  Instinctively, I cut off the water-works and stood there very quietly looking at the lion that was no more than ten yards away.  I knew that making eye contact with him was probably a very bad idea.  My heart raced as I stood there with the front of my pants open staring into the eyes of the lion.  As I started to back away with my pants still open, he roared.  If you have never heard a lion roar from ten yards away, you should go stand around at the zoo until you have the opportunity.  It reverberated in my chest, seemingly interrupting my heart’s own cadence with its discordant pulsation.  The lion stood and charged at me. 

... 

Tedious research
So, the book is partially set in the Horn of Africa in 1940.  As a result I spent countless hours researching the East African Campaign and the Italian expansion of its empire under Mussolini into Ethiopia.  Hours of reading, sketching, cross checking dates.  Then, I write this:

The Ambassador Hotel was a marvelous sprawling bungalow of a building set atop a lush green lawn.  We rode our horses up the driveway past all the automobiles that lined its side.  Automobiles were still fairly new and the Ambassador didn’t see fit to lose any of its expansive lawns for something as pedestrian as a parking lot.  So the rich people’s vehicles littered the side of the driveway.  Blue (his horse) pooped on the way up, so it was probably a draw as to which mode of transportation the management preferred its clientele to operate on hotel grounds.

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Changing Tactics
That was also the day I learned the word Ghurkha.
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Making Tea
For all of you who complain I never write romance (you know who you are) this is for you:

I joined Francie at the sink with the copper kettle in order to fill it and make some tea.  For a brief moment the sides of our hips touched quite by accident and it was if magic passed from her and into me, disrupting my heart and rendering my speech faulty.  I lingered beside her momentarily, unsure if I could move.  She moved to the side and smiled at me, which felt like the final straw that would stop my heart completely, but yet I lingered.  “Excuse me,” she said and she took the last few remaining bowls from the sink to provide me room to fill the kettle.  I stared into the empty sink for a moment.  She noticed me struggling and turned the water on for me.  Awakened, I slid the kettle under the stream.

“Well, have a seat Mr. Mouthpiece,” Mother said to Graast.  I suppose he was her lawyer to insult, so I didn’t interject.  He understood her Alzheimer’s and was therefore more patient.  He also understood that she (and by extension me) was the wealthiest client he’d ever meet.  He smiled warmly and sat with Mother.  Francie joined the three of us for tea, and I have no idea what the conversation was.

 ...

Making Time for the Ladies

In those days I took my midday meal with Mother.  She had degraded before our eyes.  In the time it took to build the Barn, and all of its hidden subfloors, Mother had forgotten how to dress and feed herself.  We converted the parlour of the house into her bedchamber and had the handymen build a door into it off the main hallway, where otherwise someone could peer into her room from there as they passed.  She had privacy in a parlour that was made to look just like her bedchamber upstairs.  Her bed was placed where the pile of round, throwing stones once was.

The handymen also installed a main floor water closet and tub where Mother could bath without needing to climb stairs.  The foreman proffered the idea when I was directing him to replicate her bedchamber in the parlour.  It was a stroke of genius, because within a month there was no possible way Mother could climb stairs.  A month following that, Francie and I made our bedchamber where Mother’s once was.

That was a fact that the older nurse didn’t favour.  She took up the matter with Doctor Greene who took the matter up with me.  Apparently it was inappropriate for Francie to take up house with me while providing care to Mother.  I remember the good Doctor had trouble broaching the subject with me.  I listened to him bumble and moan for a moment, thinking he had more bad news about mother.  I was relieved when he said, “Nurse Farrington has an issue with your relationship with Francine.  She believes I should too.”

As Dembe noted, I had become more and more like my father, for good and bad.  “Replace her,” I said.

“But, I…”

“Do you share her misgivings?” I asked.

“I am too well compensated to have misgivings,” he said.

“Then replace her, and make sure I don’t see her again.”

And he did.  I never saw cranky nurse Farrington again.  On the day Dembe accepted the name Harder Security, a new nurse was feeding mother her midday meal.  She was in her early twenties, beautiful, and African.  She smiled shyly at me as I sat with her as Mother ate.  She listened intently to me as I spoke to my Mother about the weather, the meal, and the progress we were making with the winery.  Each time I looked at the beautiful Ghanaian nurse, she smiled.  It was fairly obvious that the good Doctor Greene intended to prostitute as many pretty nurses as it took to keep his fairly rich compensation package.  It never occurred to me to set him straight.

“The vintner says it looks like the majority of the vines can be saved,” I said.  She looked at me and chewed her food that the pretty Ghanaian was spooning into her.  It looked to be runny porridge or rice pudding.  Whatever it was, chewing appeared to be redundant.  “The Barn is finished,” I said.  She looked at the nurse who feed her another glop of mush.  “It seems Dembe has invited the first guest to review our operation,” I said.  She said nothing, chewed, and looked vacant – most likely anything she was seeing was in her mind’s eye.  “Hopefully he will become a customer.  Dembe is hopeful, but I’m not sure.  I haven’t spoken with the man yet.”  She smiled for no reason.  No reason related to what I was saying at least.

“Have you spoken to Jeremy?” she asked.  I sat there confused, and said nothing.  I had discovered the hard way that she preferred me interloping in her delusions than interrupting them with logic or current events. 

“I haven’t for a while,” I said by way of compromise.

“He is planning to go away to university.  You should think about going with him.  This is no place for a young man.  Too many awful things are going to start happening.”

“That is good advice Mother,” I said.  The young nurse smiled at me.  I smiled back, politely rather than flirtatiously.  The last thing I wanted was to anger Francie by creating the potential for any kind of triangle – perceived or real.

“America is where to go, before war comes.”

“Indeed.”

“Listen to me!”  Her eyes were bulging and gruel and spittle was running out of the corner of her mouth.  “I don’t want you to die.  I need to tell you not to die.”  She started to yell and work herself into a lather, “Don’t die.  Don’t die.  Timothy, don’t die on me and leave me here.”  The nurse stood up and did what she could to console her.  It made matters worse.  I noticed how short the nurse’s uniform was and how long her legs were.  She was bending to console Mother and wipe her face and was just nearly reaching the end of the uniform’s ability to preserve her modesty.  It diverted my attention from my yelping, thrashing mother, who wasn’t my dignified, stoic mother anymore.

“I’m not going to die,” I said calmly.

“You’re already dead,” she whispered.  It put a chill into my soul.

GRiP - Find something to grab ahold of

Please feel free and leave comments here.

GRiP is a novel about a man struggling with the familiar. Newly married, he and his wife plan for the future: settle into a career, buy a house, have a baby, and live happily ever after. Except Sebastian is both aided and tormented by a voice in his head that may stem from a psychological disorder, or may truly be a result of glimpses that Seb has of parallel universes but has trouble remembering fully. The voice, which Seb calls his “thought familiar”, helped him cheat on exams, mocks his personal habits, and knows how to hide the bodies of those Seb has accidentally enjoyed killing. 

As Seb’s life unravels, he becomes convinced that he will not be able to avoid the compulsion to kill his wife, whom he loves dearly but is unable to show her. In an effort to save his relationship and the lives of those around him, Seb seeks help to recover and thwart once and for all the familiar within.

... 

Stop reading now if you find course language offensive.  Seb ain't a nice guy 

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Endorsements
GRiP, a novel I wrote about a drug deluded sociopath who slips through alternate realities and behaves fairly badly, has content, style, and cadence that many people find off-putting.  It was written that way on purpose.  On the back cover, I'm thinking I will list the people who read it and never mentioned it again, ever.  Kinda like endorsement quotes.  Pete suggested "I thought I didn't like it at first - now I'm sure."

 ...

Getting to know Seb
His thoughts slowed his pace a little.   The Alice in Chains song that was playing would normally have cheered him up, but it didn’t.  He needed to get drunk.  But then his wife would get on him for being drunk, on a Tuesday, and would start in on him about getting more than a part time job, and what about the kids, who haven’t been conceived let alone born yet, and college wasn’t going to be any cheaper in 2020, and they should own their own house by now.  So, he had to get high instead.  Not heroin or anything.  Just oxycodone or something like that.  Something she couldn’t smell, and something she was too stupid to notice.  He could probably take a couple hundred out of the bank without her noticing right away.  If she noticed, he could say he bought a suit for interviews and was having it tailored.  That would work for a while.   Fuck, why is everything a secret?  Because everything is an inquisition.  Wait ’til she sees the $3,000 withdrawn from the supposed college account.  What you got to say then?  Silence.

... 

When your story is narrated by the voice in your head
He drove up to the window where the attendant held out his hand, laden with stubby fingers anticipating his ticket.  “Hey,” the attendant said.  Seb nodded and muttered something back.  He forgot what.  He was distracted by thoughts of how fat this guy was.  How the hell did he fit in the booth?  How’d he get in and out of it?  Geesus.  He looked like a cat that was put in a mayonnaise jar as a kitten and then force fed for a couple of years.  He could beat you in 100m.  No way.  Have another smoke and a beer.  What size are those pants you just fucked up?  He handed the sausage fingers the ticket and $7.  “You want a receipt?”  Seb didn’t so just he drove off when the barrier came up.  They were a 38.  Definitely on the upswing too.  He had a thought that he should do something about that, but turning up the radio was easier.  Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” buzzed out of his car radio in the most irritating and tinny way.  It could only have been worse if it was AM and slightly miss-tuned so as to add that little high pitched whine in the background.  He didn’t seem to notice.  The bass riff made his speakers warble.

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Seeing the bright side
His wipers should have been called smearers.  Really they just squished the water and grease around on his window making it almost impossible to see properly.  In fact, visibility was better after the wiper had passed and some rain had fallen in its backdraft.  Then the wiper would come back and screw it up again.  Oddly, if he left the wipers off, he couldn’t see either.  He crossed the centre line a couple of times as he drove.  Or at least he figured he did based on the oncoming cars high-beaming him and honking their horns.  He thought about veering a little more into their way, just to fuck with them, but the last thing he needed was to provoke a DUI on top of his current problems.  He checked his speedometer to make sure he was doing at least the speed limit and kept on going.  He had heard that if you’re driving slow and swerving, the cops are far more likely to single you out than if you’re confidently doing a little more than the posted speed limit.  He wasn’t really sure if that was true if he was swerving from lane to lane.  He tried to concentrate.

  ...

How to be better than everyone else 
He walked back into his cube and Windows was almost done its startup.bat. Not exactly noting the irony, he launched the terminal software that connected to the mainframe. He was running a DOS window no more sophisticated than the green screen terminal that he would have gotten if he’d come to work on time. Instead, he came to work 3 hours early to get a cube with a sliver of light and a computer that he wasn’t really using as a computer.  

... 

Relaxing in front of the TV 
“So Seb, I have some news too,” she started, looking away from Seinfeld for a second.  Don’t ask him what was going on on Seinfeld.  Every time he watched that show he’d sit there and fantasize about hooking Kramer up to electrodes and zapping him.  Or punching George in the face.  He never knew what was going on when he watched that show.  Boring.  A goddam whole show about two guys arguing over a parking spot? Geesus he could get that downtown.

 ...

Suspecting you're in the wrong alternate reality 
Maybe he could find an old bastard to bash with a shovel, just to take the edge off. That’s what the Dilaudid is supposed to be for. But it isn’t working is it? Why is that? He could feel the numbness and nothing, nothing at all hurt, not even his back and his feet – and at this point in his life and his weight, they were pretty much supposed to hurt. But his mind was still doing that thing it does. The thing that gets people pooling into hotel room carpet instead of getting their back taxes filed. Why was that? It always worked before. Yeah, but this time it’s Jo. Jo knows the music you like, and she watches you paint for hours and drinks green tea. No she doesn’t. Well she should. She’s seven, seven year olds don’t drink tea.  Musically she likes the Wiggles. And she watches Dora when I paint. It’s because you paint shit. And they hurt her head, so it’s different.  

... 

Finding a more productive hobby 
Part of his problem was that he was alone today. Maybe he should get a blow-up doll, put a Kindle or a tablet in its hands, and stick it on the couch behind him. It wouldn’t talk any less than either of his two real women, and it wouldn’t change his music on him either. He smiled. “Radio, eighties new wave, not Culture Club, shuffle all,” and he laid out some titanium white on his palette. By the time OMD’s “If You Leave” was done, his colours were all laid out and ready to go. There was more than he’d ever use finishing this piece, but if there was one thing he hated, it was breaking the creative process to squeeze a tube. It ruined his mojo.  

... 

Climbing the corporate ladder 
He had a couple of conference calls, and was thankful for the <mute> button on his phone so he could mock his colleagues from around the country as they spoke. It was how he passed his time. He really only needed to be downtown today as an excuse to clean out his glove box; but sundown was still a couple of hours away. He tried to remember more details of the double murder, but they still eluded him. He was starting to agree that taping it would have been cool, especially if he was going to gap out. But the tape would probably have to go into the river with the rest of the stuff. Yeah and the knife should finally go too.  

... 

How not to adjust your meds 
After a week of the lowered dosage Seb was feeling fine. The half-pills were a pain in the ass, they didn’t split well, so he just knocked it down by a pill a day. The twitchiness was much less and the times when he couldn’t really move off of the couch were almost non-existent. He was, however, sitting on the couch and watching an episode of Bob Ross, but because he enjoyed it not because he couldn’t get up. He had a thought that Bob’s soothing voice made it impossible for most people to get up off the couch, not just the over-medicated ones like he’d been. When the episode was over, he was suitably inspired to paint.  

Electronic version 
ISBN 978-0-9920447-0-1 ebook
ISBN 978-0-9920447-0-8 print
ASIN B00E3FPYJ0 kindle

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