“We’ve already discussed this. Strike here.†Proserpina tiredly raps Ernestine’s first two knuckles. “Keep your left hand out to guard and uncurl your right arm as you extend it–”
“I’ve told you, I’m left-handed.”
“Not yet you’re not. You’ll learn to do this the proper way first, and then you’ll be able to switch if you must.”
“When do I get to spar with the two of you?” Ernestine complains. “Why do I have to spend all my time just hitting your musty oatmeal bag over and over?”
“Because over the last fortnight,” Proserpina grates, “the bag has learned more than you.”
Widlow goes out bald and alone on a muggy evening, green shorts on pale legs and socks under sandals, and when his racket swats the ball toward the green back wall of the empty court it is the saddest thing.
Down the street a couple stop eating and talking, their mouths full of unspoken regret. Dogs lie down and sigh; children pause in their pretending, struck by the dread of a summer soon gone.
Widlow isn’t crying. Crying would imply catharsis. He shuffles over to where the ball has stopped and leans down for it, and drops it the first time.
“A nameless kill is without glory,” hisses the tattooed man, “and rest assured that today you die. So this I tell you: I am Amadeus Faust.”
“Really?” says Alex.
“That’s kinda semiotically loaded, man,” says Tyler.
“Tyler,” says Toe. “Gross.”
“You don’t even know what semiotics is.”
“I know I don’t want to see you two load each other with it.”
“Is your surname really Faust?” asks Daniel curiously. “I thought the preferred transliteration–”
“I chose it myself,” snaps Faust.
Alex smirks. “If we’re picking our own names, I want Einstein Tyrannosaur.”
“Dude!” says Toe. “You know that one was mine!”
Rondo dreams that he’s completely on top of the whole Pittsburgh situation: everyone coordinating perfectly, grudges sidelined, signatures of approval piling up in his in-tray. On waking, he’s deeply disappointed that it wasn’t real. This is alleviated by the discovery that he can fly.
Rondo whoops through barrel rolls; he scatters geese and skims the center line down I-95. It’s so easy. There’s no wind noise or bugsplatter, and to accelerate he just bites his lip and squints and tries.
The next night he has a dream about money, and when he wakes up all his teeth fall out.
Olgy and Incher and black-tongued Ewards, each selling coke to burn blue in your stove; at the foot of the Furnace they’re bastard dukes. But each must answer to the Coal King.
“I asked,” booms the King, “where’s my real share.”
“Oh!” babbles Coker Ewards, dangling from the King’s grip above the Curbin Street well. “I hadn’t counted pieces of coke I sold multiple times but I see now that was wrong!”
The Coal King bobbles his belt for a second; a squeak echoes down the abyss.
“Afraid of the dark?” chuckles the Coal King, whose name, once, was Nat.
There’s a church named after him in Kansas, which is hilarious. From 1922 to 1978 he made it a point to stop by the night before his own feast day, every year, and paint something obscene on the front doors–until they caught on in ’66 and he had to start writing on the grass with gasoline instead.
He would have liked to pee on the altar, but of course that would mean setting foot inside. Stupid rules. Eventually they paved the lawn and he got bored and went to Madagascar.
No way Ahasuerus is ever getting one, so, y’know, there.
“Hello!” beams Ryan as the ululations subside, “and welcome back to Graven Idol. Before the break you got to see Enlil perform ‘Ripening the Harvest,’ followed by Raël’s interesting take on ‘The Driving of the Infidel from the Lands of Our Fathers.’ Next up, let’s see what Molech’s got for us!”
The spotlight picks out a lopsided red clay figurine. His priest scuttles onstage, sets fire to a little pool of lamp oil, and dunks a baby in it.
“Okay!” says Ryan. “Judges?”
“That was really something special,” sniffles the one who’s usually a mean drunk.
“╚╘ï®â‚ªâ‚ª,” replies Molech, in cuneiform.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Too fast?” Their lips hover very close.
“Keith!” Her urgent eyes. “This isn’t as easy as it feels, this isn’t–if you–you can’t. It means too much.”
“All right,” he says. “What about a peck on the cheek?”
“Maybe–”
“Or on the soft place,” he murmurs, “right here behind your jaw…”
“Nnno!” She pulls back. “You’re not playing fair.”
“All right,” he says, a little hurt, reckless. “You tell me what I’m supposed to do, then.”
She holds out her hand.
“Here?”
He takes it.
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“Okay.”
Then they kiss so hard she splits her lip.