“A zero-one-infinity problem,” Senji repeats flatly.
“Yes!” Hawthorne is trying to be suave in a smoking jacket, but he ruins it by vibrating with enthusiasm. “White wine has no contact with the grapeskins, blush wine has minimal contact, and red wine has full. But if you have grapeskins, why use the flesh of the grape at all? I give you–black wine!”
He whips off a velvet cover, revealing a bottle with a masking-tape label and two half-full goblets. Senji picks up one of them and tilts it; the purple sludge inside doesn’t move.
“Man, you have terrible ideas,” he says.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
It occurs to Burke that the sensory experience most closely akin to kissing Patty is Pixie Stix: trying and trying to dislodge a chunk from one, and ending up with a mouthful of wet, sad paper straw. Except with Patty you don’t get the zing of sugar in the first place. Burke always wondered if they were supposed to be flavored differently. Maybe the purple ones were grape and the orange ones, well, eponymous, but what taste would one associate with neon green?
“Burke?” Patty pulls away, looking as confused as he feels. “I–is something wrong?”
“Kiwi!” he says, wrongly.
“She said fingerprints ruin them!” mutters Jorge.
“That’s crap,” says Dina. “It’s the coolest feeling in the world, but they want to keep it for themselves! I’ve touched them before, plenty of times, and nothing bad happened. Cave guides are selfish bastards.”
He squints at her. “Are you sure–”
“Now!” she whispers. “While she’s not looking!”
Jorge leans over and presses his fingers against the stalagmite. It feels exactly like a cold, wet rock; when he jerks his hand back, there are four distinct impressions on its side. He stares at Dina.
“Okay, I just hate cave guides,” Dina admits.
may meet with lucrative gains.
Libra (Sep. 24 – Oct. 23): This is a time for unburning bridges. Look back at your recent personal history, perhaps the last two or three months, and reconsider relationships you may have left behind. Were those decisions too hasty? It’s in your interest to patch things up. Nobody’s perfect. Come on, Cheryl, everybody makes mistakes. What is it about this one that you can’t forgive? Please move back in. I miss you. So do the cats.
Scorpio (Oct. 24 – Nov. 22): Wait–Cheryl, is your birthday on the 23rd or 24th? Oh shit! Oh
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
In the reverse of the natural order, the pile of leaves jumps into Claude. They can’t quite make out what happens next, but there’s a wrenching pop and a muffled scream, and then Claude’s arm comes flying out to land at their feet.
Claude’s not attached to the arm. They all stare at it. Janice pokes it with her rake.
The pile drops Claude’s remains and turns to (somehow) face them. Its color has deepened from Harvest Gold to Cadmium Red. It’s breathing.
“RUN!” screams Marco.
They manage to set it on fire later, which seems, briefly, like a great idea.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Somewhere a bell rings, and Karen stands. “Jerk,” she adds, and walks away.
An eleven-year-old girl rolls up next to Andre, who has his chin in his hands. The girl has big dark eyes and a scooter. Her name is Corbin.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“The usual,” sighs Andre. “I cast a spell so she’ll go out with me, I mention that pronouncing the longest word in English will break it and bam! ‘Pneumo-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis’ and she’s gone. Stupid Google.”
“Ah.”
“I should’ve picked something harder to say,” says Andre glumly.
“I think you’re addressing the wrong problem, Andre,” says Corbin.
DENVER ACADEMY OF is all you can make out now, as the encroaching black something has moved up over the bottom row. Nothing gets rid of it. They soaped, bleached and sandblasted; they trashed the old marker, dug under it, poured ten feet of concrete and put a new one on top. The black stain crept up again.
“Mutant lichen,” says Morse.
“Cheap granite,” mutters Wehner.
“Moon dogs!” insists Havel. “Pale shades, pissing their black spoor on this spot to mark it as their Hell-bound stake!” Havel got a story published once, and he’s not about to let anybody forget it.
Most of Mimi’s house is gone–she’s lucky Leon showed up. She was hanging from a sink. Upside-down.
The remaining stations say the fault’s holding steady at 112 feet above sea level, which is about seven feet off the ground, here. Above the fault, things fall up. Leon notes that this has an odd effect on the hands above his head–no blood wants to go up to them, but none wants to leave either. They’re turning purple.
Mimi’s trembling. “It’s gonna be okay,” Leon reassures her, trying to sit down, as they lock arms against the pull of the sky.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
“Certainly, Feldman had the more Brandoesque demeanor,” Duvall says. “But it’s hard to make the case–”
“I disagree,” says C.P. “It’s not hard at all, and… Harrison, are you listening?”
But Harrison’s daydreaming–daydreaming about listening, in fact. He’s partitioned in his mind the sets of sounds his ears sense, those he actually hears and those he’ll remember. They’re fairly disparate, after all. What if you overlaid them? Would they be too close–not quite one wavelength off–so you’d end up with feedback? Or would the differences in timing and tone be enough to make harmony, rhythm, melody, music?
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
“All our flights but one have been cancelled,” apologizes the pretty Asian girl behind the desk.
“Let me guess,” says Floyd woodenly. “You’ve got one seat left on it. Coach.”
“Why, yes, sir! Compliments of the airline. We’ll have to re-route your luggage through Alexandretta to meet you in Carthage–is that acceptable?”
Floyd knows neither of them will make it there. Cancellations on the layover, and he’ll be redirected to another in a series of increasingly unreal cities. Where next–Constantinople? Metropolis? Babylon? Ur?
“Sir?” she’s asking.
“Wherever,” he says. One hundred twelve and counting, and never a flight home.