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Monthly Archives: September 2009

Caroline

Firework resuscitation is exactly the kind of business you think it is, which is why Caroline has nine fingers and no eyes.

“I can just buy some new ones,” says Jodi, whose inability to make eye contact has her extra-nervous.

“And leave unexploded ordnance lying around? Not on my watch,” chuckles Caroline. Her hands probe the Flamingo Fountain as if it’s a sore appendix. “Scalpel. Fuse.”

Jodie passes them (the former, carefully, handle-first). “But don’t you always expect to get a few duds?”

“Nothing’s a dud,” says Caroline, “to a hacker,” and lights a match on the stub of her thumb.

Jacob

The problem with inheriting a two-hundred-year-old mansion with its own staff and wrought-iron candlesticks and everything is that eventually somebody’s going to get killed in there, guaranteed, one night while the roads and the power are out and your old frenemies are in town; you’ll quickly come to understand why the candlestick is a weapon in that board game, and the greed of your compatriots will light their faces as they decide to silence you for good, so go ahead and hang out with a murderer (Jacob) in college, and at least that way you’ll already know.