Quinn draws a path, leans down and bump bump click the eight-ball’s pocketed. He straightens to notice a stubbled man slashing for his face.
Quinn thinks: this knife is a vector. It becomes a directed line, in his vision; he becomes a set of points.
Thinks: this man is a vector.
Thinks: the force motivating him is a vector.
Outward, upward, his mind’s eye macros to take in the city. He’s a point, and–there–Ciarlante’s a web of tangled light, reaching out…
Micro again, Quinn becomes a vector, turning lazily to direct the stubbled man forward, straight through the table.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
“You’ve blown your filthy catalpa leaves into my yard for the last time, Jackson!” screams Smythe, red-faced, and whips out an ominous black remote control. He smashes its single button with one finger.
Behind him, his brown brick split-level trembles, quakes and erupts out of the earth. Huge titanium legs turn it around as blue-hot flames jet from its windows; the front stoop unfolds into three sets of gnashing concrete teeth.
“What does your catalpa say… to Housezilla?” shouts Smythe, through the din.
Jackson’s unperturbed. He glances sideways at eight-year-old Teddy, playing in the sandbox.
And thumbs his own remote control.
Friday, February 27, 2004
Tigo’s head emerges from the brush, scattering parrots. Sweat drips from his grizzle.
Hurree’s machete chops out nearby, and he follows it, standing damp but tall in cliffside grass. “Yes,” he mutters, surveying. “Just as in the stories…”
“You sure about this, Hurree?”
“Sure as I’ve ever been,” he says, shrugging off his pack. “Hold this. I’m going in.”
A moment later, he’s moving down the dirt track that hatches the cliffside. A lone yip reaches Tigo on the wind, and he stares bug-eyed into Barranca de Perroqueños Qui No el Miedo Saben, Canyon of the Pekingese Who Know Not Fear.
Halley knows nobody comes through this part of the library–that’s why he’s here, in fact, to find a free computer–so he’s surprised to see so many chairs in the Bingham Reading Room. It looks like they actually had a reading, except he can’t remember any such announcement.
He imagines a lonely janitor, gesticulating for an invisible audience. He imagines ghosts settling their cold-jelly bones, drinking ethereal tea. He imagines Long Huo, Chair Herder, ushering his charges to new pastures.
Halley laughs at himself and heads to the computer.
After a fierce debate, the chairs vote to have him killed.
The question, thinks Shaun, is are you the kind of man who blusters here? Or do you take the hit to pride, so neither you nor she gets hurt?
“Hurry up!” snaps the man with the 38-caliber.
“All right,” Shaun says carefully. “Don’t shoot. I’m getting out my wallet.”
Something flickers through the streetlight above them. Both men look up, and Shaun registers that Lissa is not in fact standing behind him: she’s inverted in the air, acrobatic, spinning to kick the mugger’s face with a pair of legs that God must have put together as proof of Her own existence.
She’s pleasantly hungry and the colored lights are like flavors. Apple green, ice blue, a streetlight turns Andra orange. Kenny has the camcorder again, but Paige doesn’t mind this time. Hayden touched her hand, opening the car door. She’s sure he’ll do it again. She hopes.
Paige decides to turn a cartwheel. Kenny hands off the camera and just falls down. After that everything anyone says is a laugh, and they end up in the lawn of Tales Told Coffee. Someone’s playing inside, and Paige lets herself think quietly at last, about what Spanish guitar can do for a summer night.
Carmel is running for his life, so he makes for the tree with the lowest branches and swings his way out of reach. Moments later the tree twangs like a bowstring as the witch rams it head-on; it sheds pine needles and a raccoon, almost. He grabs the branch next to Carmel.
“Hello,” says Carmel.
“Hello. What was that?”
“A witch,” says Carmel. “She’s very angry because I cut off her hands.”
“I have hands!” says the raccoon. He holds one out to demonstrate.
“Me too!” says Carmel, and they shake hands, hanging there. It seems like the thing to do.
The rain starts to fall. In a microphone, it’d be loud as clumsy feet. Rain’s always louder in the movies, Izzy thinks, except when they talk.
The yard’s gone to hell. Weeds sprout in some places, but it’s the leaves that rule: brown and dry, inch-thick, a sheet pulled over dead grass. Izzy doesn’t care. He left the mulcher behind, and there it’ll stay, rusting in the shed. Comfortably wrapped in unreachability, she doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t want to. Why? Together they were epic. What is she, alone?
Worthless, a haiku, her opening line bland as “the rain starts to fall.”
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
“I’d name my son Ezekiel,” announces Duke.
“Ezekiel?” says Rudy.
“E-za-kayl,” he repeats with relish. “Ezekayl Dianté Quinnon.”
“I know you didn’t just put my son’s name in yours!” objects Rudy. “I told you I’m a name my son Kwinnay.”
“How y’all gonna argue over names now?” grumbles Monica, but secretly she’s thinking the same things. She wants daughters, herself, and they’ll have new and beautiful names, original poetry just for them. No more Monicas, no more Dukes. Their children will all be called by music, names you could dance to, names you could step to: Dionna, B’Lynn, Alonsé Kitala Quinnon.
The little red Aspire in which Calbert drives himself and Dorcas everywhere is long past dead, is in fact undead, something Calbert refuses to acknowledge. He loves the Aspire, even though it makes tortured shrieks when starting, stopping, reversing or driving a 2% grade. Even though its left rear brake light is smashed, covered with duct tape. (At least, Calbert says, it’s red duct tape.)
The truth is that Calbert sees himself as the Aspire: small, battered, and determined. Deep down, Calbert knows that his little car can fly.
He’s wrong, but only because Dorcas keeps putting PCP in the soup.