I am in the warehouse with a bunch of former military engineers. Naturally, the conversation turns to Die Hard, as warehouse conversations are wont to do. This quickly leads me into making an imaginary uzi, and shooting a co-worker.
"Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!" I sound, making the stuttering noise of a semi-automatic rifle that is, if I say so myself, scarily accurate.
Of course, he dodges, because he is a male, and therefore, able to dodge super-sonic bullets. I can't blame him, although really, I should have hit him, because I am a male, and therefore, unable to miss. Anyways, he draws two imaginary desert eagles (I suppose they could be glocks, but if we're gonna deal with imaginary guns, they should probably be cool imaginary guns, right?).
With his deagles, he proceeds to blast at the table I am hiding behind. "Bkchhsss! Bkchssss!" He says, scrunching his face up, Axl Rose style, while he makes the sounds. Of course, he doesn't hit, but that imaginary computer in front of me explodes in a cascade of imaginary sparks.
Another man rushes to my defence with a shotgun, letting out a loud "BOOM!" and then a cocking sound. He covers me while I run to cover, just as two more men rush into the fray on the other side. One sprays the area with AK-47 fire ("ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!") while the other seems to be working on some sort of shoulder-mounted rocket launcher which is sure to blow a hole in that imaginary wall behind me.
I will walk away from that explosion in slow motion.
It's looking bad. That rocket launcher is being loaded up, and I can hear Marc in the next room, supplying the "pings!" and "Chinks!" as imaginary bullets tear up the warehouse. And then, my compatriot comes to the rescue.
Jill comes out from behind cover, standing in the middle of the doorway like an easy target, and has some sort of derringer pistol which seems to consist of her thumb stuck out like a hitchhiker's along with a pointy-finger... the ol' "Finger-Banger". She points this puny pistol at the rocket-man, and begins firing.
"Pew! Pew!"
Silence rains in the warehouse, the only sound being that of imaginary sparks firing off a broken screen and phantasmal flames lapping at spilled diesel on the floor. The combatants all look at each other, and then put down their arms.
"Girls don't know how to make sound effects," Rocket man says.
Another man holsters his desert eagles. "Did anyone watch that football game last night?"
"I miss my kids," the assault rifler says, strolling out of the room, shaking his head as he looks at Jill's pistol, still in her hand.
Jill looks at me, but I'm trying to avoid eye contact. "What'd I do?" She asks.
I shake my head and get back to work.
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
First Draft: St Patrick's Day
I've been writing a lot, lately. And I like to share, even when I'm sharing ugly first drafts. Here's a little piece from a 'long short story' I've been working on. By all means, I'm willing to take feedback! -Dave
Colton once told me that our job is where dreams go to die. He’d point at an office door, and say “see, Pat? No kid ever wants to grow up to be an assistant secretary to the director.”
He had a point. We work in a giant government office that is mostly tied to processing the thousands of applications for security jobs in the province – because every rent-a-cop in every mall of British Columbia has to be thoroughly checked over by us before we let him earn near minimum wage hours chasing down tweaked-out shoplifters.
About a third of the staff here are former cops who some way or another mustered out, while another third are career pencil-pushers who forgot the meaning of “aspiration” about three seconds after they threw their tasselled hats into the air. The other third of us are the students who realized our fancy degrees were only useful as bargaining chips to get us into the doors for a mid-paying, high-benefit office job.
We had psych majors, anthropology majors, history majors, music majors, English majors, philosophy majors. A few people, such as myself, had double majors in equally useless fields (history and music). Basically, we got a degree, and then traded what we knew for a crash course in Excel, file maintenance, and FLEX days.
After my first six months of work, I was given my own office because the head of the department felt I needed one in which to do my own particular brand of work. On moving in, I hung a framed vinyl Japanese print of Pink Floyd’s Animals on the wall – you know, the one with the smokestacks and the flying pig in the air? – and the boss came in, took a long look at it, and said “I’m not really much of a Beatles fan.”
It is that type of place.
The office is more or less empty today, as it’s almost an hour before the main shift begins. Only a few of us – those on the lowest rung of the government ladder – start at the 7:45 shift instead of the more normal 8:30. Normally, this means Colton and I, as well as a few others who hide in the break room, have about half an hour of unscheduled “work” that usually turns into a bullshitting session, a frank sex discussion, or an extra-long coffee break. However, this morning, Sandra is there, hanging bright green tassels from the ceiling. From her step ladder perch, she can survey the entire office like a meercat on the top of its perch.
I catch Colton’s eyes from across the office. He gives a lopsided grin and shrugs, as if to say “what can you do?”
Sandra is the office enthusiast. She takes her election to the office “morale team” very seriously, and whenever there is a holiday, no matter how minor, she’s there to do her part. The fact that she was elected only because no one else ran for it is completely lost on her; in her mind, she is the only force that keeps the rest of the office from sliding down the long slope into despair and self destruction. Were it not for her office decorations and mandatory themed office lunches, we would quickly succumb to anarchy and suicide.
Last month, she even decorated the place for Martin Luther King Day. Mostly it was just leftover kwanza decorations, a dairy queen ice cream cake (black, with a picture of a basketball), and pictures of school busses (“Why school busses, Sandra?” “because he wouldn’t sit in the back of the bus” “That’s Rosa Parks” “Who?”). Being Victoria, about half a percent of the population is black. The one black guy in our office was mortified.
It was pretty funny.
“Sandra, what are you doing?” I ask, throwing my backpack into my office.
“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, silly!” She has already swathed the office in green tinsel. It occurs to me that there must be companies that make Christmas decorations, and that they must find something to keep themselves busy the other eleven months out of the year. Sandra, and people like her, is what keep them from laying off their staff every January.
“You don’t say. You, um, bought a lot of decorations....”
“I know. Aren’t they the bees knees?”
Sandra is the only person still alive who still says “bees knees”. What’s sad is that she was born in the 1970s. She also says “gosh”, “fanny”, and “oh dear”. Oh, and if you don’t hate her already, her favourite musician is Taylor Swift and her favourite movie is Sixteen Candles.
“They’re definitely... something. Oh god. Are those green candy canes?”
“They are!” Sandra smiles widely.
Colton stands up and calls across the office. “Show Patrick the dancing leprechaun!”
“Ooh!” Sandra squeals, and bounces down from her step ladder. “Follow me.”
She leads me into the break room, which has been converted into a stock room for every St. Patrick’s Day decoration known to man: cardboard pots of gold, little golden chocolate coins, four leaf clover posters, more of those damned green candy canes, and green felt clovers. And there, in the middle of the room, is a statuette, about the size and general shape of a garden gnome. Except, this one is a leprechaun with fiery red hair and a creepy smile painted on.
His eyes bore into my soul.
“He dances.”
“He.... dances?” I say, staring into those eyes.
“Watch.” And Sandra claps her hands loudly. Suddenly, the leprechaun is doing the twist while fiddle music plays from a tinny speaker at its base.
“My god...”
“Isn’t it amazing?”
I shudder. “It should be a war crime, Sandra.”
“A... war crime?”
Colton comes up from behind us. He’s sucking on a candy cane. “Don’t listen to him, Sandy. Patrick is just grumpy because it’s his day and all.”
“You son of a...” I begin, but Sandra cuts me off.
“Your day? Oh, right! You’re Saint Patrick!”
“I am not...”
“But you have red hair. And you’re Irish.”
“My mom was born in Ireland. That doesn’t make me...”
“And your name is Patrick!”
“Yes, but I’m not Saint Patrick.”
“Well, no one’s calling you a saint.” Sandra says, and then giggles. I’ve heard this joke about five hundred times in my life. If you ever see me up on top of a tall building with a high powered sniper rifle, doing a little bit of “spring cleaning”, you now know why.
I hated the day growing up. Every year, my mother would get depressed because everyone would good naturedly make her the star of the show. And my mother hated attention, which made it worse.
Of course, I got a good chunk of it, too. Even in elementary school, teachers would point it out to the class. There’s a picture, somewhere in a family photo album, of me in the second grade. I’m dressed up as a leprechaun, with a fake red beard and an Abe Lincoln top hat that’s been painted green, standing on top of a chair. In the picture, I’m doing my best to hold a smile, but I remember about two seconds after the photo was taken, I burst into tears and then threw my hat Becky Williams.
I wish I could say that Saint Patrick’s Day got better at some point after the second grade, but that would be a lie. Even with the invention of alcohol (I should say “personal discovery of alcohol”, but it didn’t feel that way when I was sixteen), the day didn’t get any better. Usually, I’d just drink until I passed out, or threw a fist at the biggest asshole in the room, daring him to swing back. This didn’t help dispel the claims of my innate Irishness; I was known as “Fighting Irish” until I was twenty.
Yes, I know, it’s just a day. And really, why should I be upset over a bit of attention? Carrie once asked me this, and I couldn’t think of a good answer as to why I so hated a day that mostly just centred around drinking and good cheer. I mean, the lame jokes at my expense were annoying, but that’s it.
Eventually, I decided that I hated the day because it was so hypocritical. Every other day of the year, people would either ignore me, or make lame jokes at my expense. Being short and ginger-haired does not usually make someone popular, and it definitely didn’t for me, either. I grew up with people kicking me on “National Kick a Ginger Day”, telling me “Gingers have no soul”, and generally making jokes about my hair that always kept me at arms length. Hell, when I was nineteen, I went on a blind date where the woman took one look at me and said “I don’t date redheads” and walked out.
So that was the natural state of things. Fine. I could live with that.
But then, once a year, having red hair made me worthwhile, and people would try to make me the star of the show. And I just hated the sudden flip, because I knew that, come March 18th, it would be back to business as usual.
Colton volunteers my services to help hang up decorations, because “Pat’s got nothing better to do.”
Naturally, I volunteer Colton because “his judge said he needs to do some community service, and this counts”.
Sandra rolls her eyes and let us hang crap over the office. It’s not what people stereotypically think of as “the office” – there are no rows of self-contained cubicles. Instead, it almost harkens back to the 1950s, with rows of open desks and miniature offices that line the edges of an open workspace. Every desk is painstakingly individualized with personality-defining photographs of family, comic calendars, and vacation mementoes. It says something that despite this, each desk looks no different than the rest.
Colton and I make fun of each other for a bit, but then Colton starts on with the “St. Patrick” crap, and I get grumpy.
“You know, Patrick, you should be happy. You have your own day!” Sandra says, trying to cheer me up for God-Knows-Why. Even I’m not too happy with myself right now, and if I think I’m being a bit of a twat, who knows what everyone else must be thinking?
“Trust me. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“You seem to be a glass half empty sort of guy.”
“Thanks, Sandra. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The glass is half full, Patrick. Half full. Life’s great.” She smiles at me, holding a shamrock with silver glitter text exhorting ‘Have a Safe Saint Patrick’s Day!’
“Sandra, it all depends on context.”
“What?”
“The glass. It’s all about context. That ‘half empty, half full’ stuff is all about context. The glass is only half full if it went from being empty and you filled it up halfway. If you had a full glass and drank half of it, it’d be half empty. So, whether someone thinks the glass is half empty or half full has absolutely nothing to do about their world view, and all about whether or not they assumed the glass was full or empty to begin with.”
Sandra’s face falls a little bit. “I, um, guess you’re right....”
“I am. And why are you hanging up all this shit, anyway? You’re just going to take it all down tomorrow.”
I realize I’m the douchebag in this situation. Every damn year, it gets worse. Leprechauns and shamrocks in the morning, drunken assholes in the night.
And now, fucking green candy canes.
“I like the day. I don’t care what you think. I wish there was a ‘St. Sandra Day’. Could you imagine?”
Colton snickers. I laugh, and forget that Sandra is not Colton. “Yeah. We’d all exchange staplers and sing about our twelve cats. The day would end at 8:30 pm. And the theme song would be ‘Silent Night’.”
Sandra starts crying, and I feel like even more of an asshole.
Colton once told me that our job is where dreams go to die. He’d point at an office door, and say “see, Pat? No kid ever wants to grow up to be an assistant secretary to the director.”
He had a point. We work in a giant government office that is mostly tied to processing the thousands of applications for security jobs in the province – because every rent-a-cop in every mall of British Columbia has to be thoroughly checked over by us before we let him earn near minimum wage hours chasing down tweaked-out shoplifters.
About a third of the staff here are former cops who some way or another mustered out, while another third are career pencil-pushers who forgot the meaning of “aspiration” about three seconds after they threw their tasselled hats into the air. The other third of us are the students who realized our fancy degrees were only useful as bargaining chips to get us into the doors for a mid-paying, high-benefit office job.
We had psych majors, anthropology majors, history majors, music majors, English majors, philosophy majors. A few people, such as myself, had double majors in equally useless fields (history and music). Basically, we got a degree, and then traded what we knew for a crash course in Excel, file maintenance, and FLEX days.
After my first six months of work, I was given my own office because the head of the department felt I needed one in which to do my own particular brand of work. On moving in, I hung a framed vinyl Japanese print of Pink Floyd’s Animals on the wall – you know, the one with the smokestacks and the flying pig in the air? – and the boss came in, took a long look at it, and said “I’m not really much of a Beatles fan.”
It is that type of place.
The office is more or less empty today, as it’s almost an hour before the main shift begins. Only a few of us – those on the lowest rung of the government ladder – start at the 7:45 shift instead of the more normal 8:30. Normally, this means Colton and I, as well as a few others who hide in the break room, have about half an hour of unscheduled “work” that usually turns into a bullshitting session, a frank sex discussion, or an extra-long coffee break. However, this morning, Sandra is there, hanging bright green tassels from the ceiling. From her step ladder perch, she can survey the entire office like a meercat on the top of its perch.
I catch Colton’s eyes from across the office. He gives a lopsided grin and shrugs, as if to say “what can you do?”
Sandra is the office enthusiast. She takes her election to the office “morale team” very seriously, and whenever there is a holiday, no matter how minor, she’s there to do her part. The fact that she was elected only because no one else ran for it is completely lost on her; in her mind, she is the only force that keeps the rest of the office from sliding down the long slope into despair and self destruction. Were it not for her office decorations and mandatory themed office lunches, we would quickly succumb to anarchy and suicide.
Last month, she even decorated the place for Martin Luther King Day. Mostly it was just leftover kwanza decorations, a dairy queen ice cream cake (black, with a picture of a basketball), and pictures of school busses (“Why school busses, Sandra?” “because he wouldn’t sit in the back of the bus” “That’s Rosa Parks” “Who?”). Being Victoria, about half a percent of the population is black. The one black guy in our office was mortified.
It was pretty funny.
“Sandra, what are you doing?” I ask, throwing my backpack into my office.
“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, silly!” She has already swathed the office in green tinsel. It occurs to me that there must be companies that make Christmas decorations, and that they must find something to keep themselves busy the other eleven months out of the year. Sandra, and people like her, is what keep them from laying off their staff every January.
“You don’t say. You, um, bought a lot of decorations....”
“I know. Aren’t they the bees knees?”
Sandra is the only person still alive who still says “bees knees”. What’s sad is that she was born in the 1970s. She also says “gosh”, “fanny”, and “oh dear”. Oh, and if you don’t hate her already, her favourite musician is Taylor Swift and her favourite movie is Sixteen Candles.
“They’re definitely... something. Oh god. Are those green candy canes?”
“They are!” Sandra smiles widely.
Colton stands up and calls across the office. “Show Patrick the dancing leprechaun!”
“Ooh!” Sandra squeals, and bounces down from her step ladder. “Follow me.”
She leads me into the break room, which has been converted into a stock room for every St. Patrick’s Day decoration known to man: cardboard pots of gold, little golden chocolate coins, four leaf clover posters, more of those damned green candy canes, and green felt clovers. And there, in the middle of the room, is a statuette, about the size and general shape of a garden gnome. Except, this one is a leprechaun with fiery red hair and a creepy smile painted on.
His eyes bore into my soul.
“He dances.”
“He.... dances?” I say, staring into those eyes.
“Watch.” And Sandra claps her hands loudly. Suddenly, the leprechaun is doing the twist while fiddle music plays from a tinny speaker at its base.
“My god...”
“Isn’t it amazing?”
I shudder. “It should be a war crime, Sandra.”
“A... war crime?”
Colton comes up from behind us. He’s sucking on a candy cane. “Don’t listen to him, Sandy. Patrick is just grumpy because it’s his day and all.”
“You son of a...” I begin, but Sandra cuts me off.
“Your day? Oh, right! You’re Saint Patrick!”
“I am not...”
“But you have red hair. And you’re Irish.”
“My mom was born in Ireland. That doesn’t make me...”
“And your name is Patrick!”
“Yes, but I’m not Saint Patrick.”
“Well, no one’s calling you a saint.” Sandra says, and then giggles. I’ve heard this joke about five hundred times in my life. If you ever see me up on top of a tall building with a high powered sniper rifle, doing a little bit of “spring cleaning”, you now know why.
**
I hated the day growing up. Every year, my mother would get depressed because everyone would good naturedly make her the star of the show. And my mother hated attention, which made it worse.
Of course, I got a good chunk of it, too. Even in elementary school, teachers would point it out to the class. There’s a picture, somewhere in a family photo album, of me in the second grade. I’m dressed up as a leprechaun, with a fake red beard and an Abe Lincoln top hat that’s been painted green, standing on top of a chair. In the picture, I’m doing my best to hold a smile, but I remember about two seconds after the photo was taken, I burst into tears and then threw my hat Becky Williams.
I wish I could say that Saint Patrick’s Day got better at some point after the second grade, but that would be a lie. Even with the invention of alcohol (I should say “personal discovery of alcohol”, but it didn’t feel that way when I was sixteen), the day didn’t get any better. Usually, I’d just drink until I passed out, or threw a fist at the biggest asshole in the room, daring him to swing back. This didn’t help dispel the claims of my innate Irishness; I was known as “Fighting Irish” until I was twenty.
Yes, I know, it’s just a day. And really, why should I be upset over a bit of attention? Carrie once asked me this, and I couldn’t think of a good answer as to why I so hated a day that mostly just centred around drinking and good cheer. I mean, the lame jokes at my expense were annoying, but that’s it.
Eventually, I decided that I hated the day because it was so hypocritical. Every other day of the year, people would either ignore me, or make lame jokes at my expense. Being short and ginger-haired does not usually make someone popular, and it definitely didn’t for me, either. I grew up with people kicking me on “National Kick a Ginger Day”, telling me “Gingers have no soul”, and generally making jokes about my hair that always kept me at arms length. Hell, when I was nineteen, I went on a blind date where the woman took one look at me and said “I don’t date redheads” and walked out.
So that was the natural state of things. Fine. I could live with that.
But then, once a year, having red hair made me worthwhile, and people would try to make me the star of the show. And I just hated the sudden flip, because I knew that, come March 18th, it would be back to business as usual.
**
Colton volunteers my services to help hang up decorations, because “Pat’s got nothing better to do.”
Naturally, I volunteer Colton because “his judge said he needs to do some community service, and this counts”.
Sandra rolls her eyes and let us hang crap over the office. It’s not what people stereotypically think of as “the office” – there are no rows of self-contained cubicles. Instead, it almost harkens back to the 1950s, with rows of open desks and miniature offices that line the edges of an open workspace. Every desk is painstakingly individualized with personality-defining photographs of family, comic calendars, and vacation mementoes. It says something that despite this, each desk looks no different than the rest.
Colton and I make fun of each other for a bit, but then Colton starts on with the “St. Patrick” crap, and I get grumpy.
“You know, Patrick, you should be happy. You have your own day!” Sandra says, trying to cheer me up for God-Knows-Why. Even I’m not too happy with myself right now, and if I think I’m being a bit of a twat, who knows what everyone else must be thinking?
“Trust me. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“You seem to be a glass half empty sort of guy.”
“Thanks, Sandra. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The glass is half full, Patrick. Half full. Life’s great.” She smiles at me, holding a shamrock with silver glitter text exhorting ‘Have a Safe Saint Patrick’s Day!’
“Sandra, it all depends on context.”
“What?”
“The glass. It’s all about context. That ‘half empty, half full’ stuff is all about context. The glass is only half full if it went from being empty and you filled it up halfway. If you had a full glass and drank half of it, it’d be half empty. So, whether someone thinks the glass is half empty or half full has absolutely nothing to do about their world view, and all about whether or not they assumed the glass was full or empty to begin with.”
Sandra’s face falls a little bit. “I, um, guess you’re right....”
“I am. And why are you hanging up all this shit, anyway? You’re just going to take it all down tomorrow.”
I realize I’m the douchebag in this situation. Every damn year, it gets worse. Leprechauns and shamrocks in the morning, drunken assholes in the night.
And now, fucking green candy canes.
“I like the day. I don’t care what you think. I wish there was a ‘St. Sandra Day’. Could you imagine?”
Colton snickers. I laugh, and forget that Sandra is not Colton. “Yeah. We’d all exchange staplers and sing about our twelve cats. The day would end at 8:30 pm. And the theme song would be ‘Silent Night’.”
Sandra starts crying, and I feel like even more of an asshole.
I've Been Thinking, pt. 2 of 2
(continued)
***
Later in the day. Same car ride.
“I’ve been thinking,” Lyn says. “We should start going to church.”
I almost slam on the brakes, like I see in those dumb romantic comedies that Lyn used to drag me to. Instead, the car swerves a bit as I look at her in shock.
“Church? Us?”
“Yes.”
“But.... why?”
She crosses her arms. “Why not?”
“We’re atheists, for starters.”
“You don’t need to believe in God to go to Church, Adam.”
“Um, I kind of think you do, actually. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“Well then, we can pretend to believe.” She smiles brightly, and puts on her best ‘dumb Asian girl’ face. “I could be the naive Chinese immigrant, and you can be the religious missionary guy who saved me from Paganism.”
“You. Naive immigrant? How would you pull that off?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I could wear a whole bunch of Hello Kitty stuff.”
I chuckle. “I didn’t know you even had Hello Kitty stuff.”
“I do. But I’ll have to remember to call it ‘Herrow Kitty-san’ or they’d get wise.”
“So, we’re going to go to a church and lie to people to convince them that we believe in a God we both agree doesn’t exist. Why?”
“I just want to go.”
“That’s not good enough, hun.” I say.
She pauses. “I just want to be around people who know.”
“You lost me.”
She thinks for a minute or two, tapping her foot on the inside of the windscreen as the Beatles sing on in the background. I’m glad I’m not one of those ‘car-guys’, or I’d be thinking about the smears she’s leaving on the glass. “Atheists know what isn’t. Religious people know what is.”
“Except what they ‘know’ is flat-out wrong. Unproven. Unproveable.”
“Maybe. But the knowing is important.”
**
Maybe a week later. On a Sunday.
I am dashing around the kitchen and living room, grabbing empties and throwing them in the recycling bin. Madly cleaning up as I can hear Lyn fumbling outside the door.
“Adam? I can’t find my keys. Can you unlock the door?”
I grab two more empty beer bottles and drop them in the bin, stepping lightly and doing my best to be silent.
“Adam?” she knocks, loudly.
I sneak past the front door, tip-toeing like some sort of half-cut ninja. I open the nearby bathroom door, step in, and gingerly close the door behind me.
“Lyn?” I call out. “Are you home already?”
We’re speaking through two closed door, so her voice is muffled. “Yes. Church ends earlier than I thought it did.”
Earlier than I thought it did, too. It’s only one. I didn’t think she’d be home until three. “Did you have fun?”
“Sort of. Can you open the door? I’m locked out.”
“Oh. Uh. I’m in the bathroom. Give me a second?”
Part of me wants to fiddle around with toilet paper to complete the illusion that I really was using the washroom, but I don’t. Instead, I just flush the toilet, fiddle with my belt to make that sort of “pulling up pants” sound, and then head to the door. I stop, and remember to wash my hands, feeling silly the whole time.
I let her in, and she leans in to kiss me. I turn around, pretending not to notice, not wanting her to smell the beer on my breath.
“How was church?”
“Boy, those church people sure love that Jesus guy,” she says flippantly, while heading to the fridge.
I try to think of something clever, but my head is a bit beer-fogged. So I just grunt instead.
“What is this?” Lyn says, peering into the fridge.
“What is what?”
“This beer bottle?”
“I’m guessing it’s a beer bottle,” I say, trying to be funny. I’m not.
“What’s it doing in the fridge?”
I think of a few possible explanations, and realize I’m stuck, so I opt for a modified version of the truth. “Oh, right, that beer bottle. I bought a four pack while watching the game, and saved one for you.”
“You drank three beers on a Sunday afternoon?” she asks. I can hear the worry in her voice, and I’m touched. “That’s not like you.”
“Yeah. I just... felt like it?”
She opens the beer using the countertop, a magic move I’ve never mastered. To me, that skill is akin to Fonzie restarting the jukebox, or that special prayer my dad used to utter to get the engine to start in the snow.
While she’s in the kitchen, I roll up the clothes sitting on our coffee table, and hide them into the cushions of the couch.
“How many beers did you have, Adam?” Lyn calls out from the other room.
“Three.”
“There are seven empties in the recycling bin.”
Damn it. “Oh, right. Uh, I had seven beers, then.”
“You had seven beers in two hours?”
“Yeah?” I say it like a question, because I know I’m in trouble.
“Are you okay?” She asks.
“I’m fine. I just got a little carried away watching the game,” I say, less slurry-voiced than I should be. I am proud of this.
“Seven beers, though? I haven’t seen you drink seven beers in a row in... well, it’s been a while.”
“Yeah, uh, it was a bad game.”
“Apparently. Who won?”
“The Canucks. But no thanks to Luongo and the Sedin twins.”
She walks into the living room and kisses me on the cheek, and then wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. You smell like a homeless guy.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, you do.”
“How was church?” I change the subject.
“It was good. There was some prayer stuff, which was weird, but then people just kind of talked. And everyone was so nice. I guess it was okay.”
I make a face, which she sees, because she pokes me in the ribs. “Sometimes it’s nice to talk to people. I haven’t been able to talk to people in a while.”
“What about me?”
“Yes. But there are things we just don’t talk about.”
I know what she’s referring to. “Is that why you’re going to church?”
She looks down at the floor. “Maybe.”
“Jesus. Aren’t they just going to make you feel worse? How can what those people” – I say ‘those people’ as if all people who attend church can be lumped up into some sort of ultra-conservative, FOX News crowd – “how can what those people say make you feel better about all this?”
“You act like it doesn’t matter, Adam.”
“Well, it does matter, of course it matters, but it’s just life. These things happen.” I know I’m lying, and I think she does, too, but I don’t know what else to do. To let her know how much I’m hurting would be to fail her, and I know that right now, she needs me to be strong. So I keep up the charade.
She isn't buying it. “These things do happen. And I guess I’d rather believe they happen for a reason, than they just happen due to random chance.”
“You’d rather believe that was due to the conscious choice of an all-knowing God?”
“We lost a baby, Adam.”
“You miscarried,” I correct her, and then instantly feel like a jackass.
“We miscarried.”
“Fine. We miscarried. Whatever. These things happen. We can’t dwell on them.”
“And you don’t care!”
“I do care! I just... it wasn’t a child, not yet. It was just cells and tissue.” I tell her this, because thinking of a miscarried fetus as cells and tissue and not a human life seems more comforting to me than to think of it as a human being. A child. It is easy not to care about cells and tissue.
“You keep saying that, and then whenever I try to talk about it, you shut down. You don’t speak. And I feel like I’m going crazy, like I did something wrong, or like I’m overreacting.”
“I... I can’t talk about these things, Lyn. I’m sorry. I just don’t know how.”
“You could go to church with me,” she says, softly.
“What?”
“You could go to church with me. Talk to people there. They... they know, I guess.”
“You want me to go to church with you?”
“I don’t like going alone. It's weird. But I need to talk to someone about all this.”
“You could... you could try talking to me about it all. I can... I can at least listen.”
“But you don’t need me right now. You’ve already moved on. I just... I don’t know...” she says, and then sits down on the couch. She feels the lump under the cushions.
She rummages around, and pulls out the baby clothes – a little Vancouver Canucks jumper, Canucks socks, and a blanket with Kessler’s number.
I awkwardly rub the back of my neck. “I bought those, um, just before it happened. I was going to surprise you, and, and...” and then, for some reason, I’m crying.
She looks at me with these huge eyes. “Oh, Adam.”
**
A few weeks later. Another Sunday, although this time, we’re out on a green field having a picnic lunch. Church lasted all of two weeks, before Lyn called them “faith-addled idiots” and stormed out in the middle of a sermon, leaving me apologizing to everyone while beating a hasty retreat.
I pass Lyn a bottle of water, and she hands me a home-made sandwich. Turkey, with spicy mustard. I make a face at the sprouts, but Lyn is making me eat them because she thinks I need to eat healthier.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says.
“Most bats can’t perceive colour, but some in the old world can. They can, however, see in black and white, and use their echolocation to aid in perception.”
Lyn makes a face. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking about?”
I smile. “Because I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
***
Later in the day. Same car ride.
“I’ve been thinking,” Lyn says. “We should start going to church.”
I almost slam on the brakes, like I see in those dumb romantic comedies that Lyn used to drag me to. Instead, the car swerves a bit as I look at her in shock.
“Church? Us?”
“Yes.”
“But.... why?”
She crosses her arms. “Why not?”
“We’re atheists, for starters.”
“You don’t need to believe in God to go to Church, Adam.”
“Um, I kind of think you do, actually. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“Well then, we can pretend to believe.” She smiles brightly, and puts on her best ‘dumb Asian girl’ face. “I could be the naive Chinese immigrant, and you can be the religious missionary guy who saved me from Paganism.”
“You. Naive immigrant? How would you pull that off?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I could wear a whole bunch of Hello Kitty stuff.”
I chuckle. “I didn’t know you even had Hello Kitty stuff.”
“I do. But I’ll have to remember to call it ‘Herrow Kitty-san’ or they’d get wise.”
“So, we’re going to go to a church and lie to people to convince them that we believe in a God we both agree doesn’t exist. Why?”
“I just want to go.”
“That’s not good enough, hun.” I say.
She pauses. “I just want to be around people who know.”
“You lost me.”
She thinks for a minute or two, tapping her foot on the inside of the windscreen as the Beatles sing on in the background. I’m glad I’m not one of those ‘car-guys’, or I’d be thinking about the smears she’s leaving on the glass. “Atheists know what isn’t. Religious people know what is.”
“Except what they ‘know’ is flat-out wrong. Unproven. Unproveable.”
“Maybe. But the knowing is important.”
**
Maybe a week later. On a Sunday.
I am dashing around the kitchen and living room, grabbing empties and throwing them in the recycling bin. Madly cleaning up as I can hear Lyn fumbling outside the door.
“Adam? I can’t find my keys. Can you unlock the door?”
I grab two more empty beer bottles and drop them in the bin, stepping lightly and doing my best to be silent.
“Adam?” she knocks, loudly.
I sneak past the front door, tip-toeing like some sort of half-cut ninja. I open the nearby bathroom door, step in, and gingerly close the door behind me.
“Lyn?” I call out. “Are you home already?”
We’re speaking through two closed door, so her voice is muffled. “Yes. Church ends earlier than I thought it did.”
Earlier than I thought it did, too. It’s only one. I didn’t think she’d be home until three. “Did you have fun?”
“Sort of. Can you open the door? I’m locked out.”
“Oh. Uh. I’m in the bathroom. Give me a second?”
Part of me wants to fiddle around with toilet paper to complete the illusion that I really was using the washroom, but I don’t. Instead, I just flush the toilet, fiddle with my belt to make that sort of “pulling up pants” sound, and then head to the door. I stop, and remember to wash my hands, feeling silly the whole time.
I let her in, and she leans in to kiss me. I turn around, pretending not to notice, not wanting her to smell the beer on my breath.
“How was church?”
“Boy, those church people sure love that Jesus guy,” she says flippantly, while heading to the fridge.
I try to think of something clever, but my head is a bit beer-fogged. So I just grunt instead.
“What is this?” Lyn says, peering into the fridge.
“What is what?”
“This beer bottle?”
“I’m guessing it’s a beer bottle,” I say, trying to be funny. I’m not.
“What’s it doing in the fridge?”
I think of a few possible explanations, and realize I’m stuck, so I opt for a modified version of the truth. “Oh, right, that beer bottle. I bought a four pack while watching the game, and saved one for you.”
“You drank three beers on a Sunday afternoon?” she asks. I can hear the worry in her voice, and I’m touched. “That’s not like you.”
“Yeah. I just... felt like it?”
She opens the beer using the countertop, a magic move I’ve never mastered. To me, that skill is akin to Fonzie restarting the jukebox, or that special prayer my dad used to utter to get the engine to start in the snow.
While she’s in the kitchen, I roll up the clothes sitting on our coffee table, and hide them into the cushions of the couch.
“How many beers did you have, Adam?” Lyn calls out from the other room.
“Three.”
“There are seven empties in the recycling bin.”
Damn it. “Oh, right. Uh, I had seven beers, then.”
“You had seven beers in two hours?”
“Yeah?” I say it like a question, because I know I’m in trouble.
“Are you okay?” She asks.
“I’m fine. I just got a little carried away watching the game,” I say, less slurry-voiced than I should be. I am proud of this.
“Seven beers, though? I haven’t seen you drink seven beers in a row in... well, it’s been a while.”
“Yeah, uh, it was a bad game.”
“Apparently. Who won?”
“The Canucks. But no thanks to Luongo and the Sedin twins.”
She walks into the living room and kisses me on the cheek, and then wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. You smell like a homeless guy.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, you do.”
“How was church?” I change the subject.
“It was good. There was some prayer stuff, which was weird, but then people just kind of talked. And everyone was so nice. I guess it was okay.”
I make a face, which she sees, because she pokes me in the ribs. “Sometimes it’s nice to talk to people. I haven’t been able to talk to people in a while.”
“What about me?”
“Yes. But there are things we just don’t talk about.”
I know what she’s referring to. “Is that why you’re going to church?”
She looks down at the floor. “Maybe.”
“Jesus. Aren’t they just going to make you feel worse? How can what those people” – I say ‘those people’ as if all people who attend church can be lumped up into some sort of ultra-conservative, FOX News crowd – “how can what those people say make you feel better about all this?”
“You act like it doesn’t matter, Adam.”
“Well, it does matter, of course it matters, but it’s just life. These things happen.” I know I’m lying, and I think she does, too, but I don’t know what else to do. To let her know how much I’m hurting would be to fail her, and I know that right now, she needs me to be strong. So I keep up the charade.
She isn't buying it. “These things do happen. And I guess I’d rather believe they happen for a reason, than they just happen due to random chance.”
“You’d rather believe that was due to the conscious choice of an all-knowing God?”
“We lost a baby, Adam.”
“You miscarried,” I correct her, and then instantly feel like a jackass.
“We miscarried.”
“Fine. We miscarried. Whatever. These things happen. We can’t dwell on them.”
“And you don’t care!”
“I do care! I just... it wasn’t a child, not yet. It was just cells and tissue.” I tell her this, because thinking of a miscarried fetus as cells and tissue and not a human life seems more comforting to me than to think of it as a human being. A child. It is easy not to care about cells and tissue.
“You keep saying that, and then whenever I try to talk about it, you shut down. You don’t speak. And I feel like I’m going crazy, like I did something wrong, or like I’m overreacting.”
“I... I can’t talk about these things, Lyn. I’m sorry. I just don’t know how.”
“You could go to church with me,” she says, softly.
“What?”
“You could go to church with me. Talk to people there. They... they know, I guess.”
“You want me to go to church with you?”
“I don’t like going alone. It's weird. But I need to talk to someone about all this.”
“You could... you could try talking to me about it all. I can... I can at least listen.”
“But you don’t need me right now. You’ve already moved on. I just... I don’t know...” she says, and then sits down on the couch. She feels the lump under the cushions.
She rummages around, and pulls out the baby clothes – a little Vancouver Canucks jumper, Canucks socks, and a blanket with Kessler’s number.
I awkwardly rub the back of my neck. “I bought those, um, just before it happened. I was going to surprise you, and, and...” and then, for some reason, I’m crying.
She looks at me with these huge eyes. “Oh, Adam.”
**
A few weeks later. Another Sunday, although this time, we’re out on a green field having a picnic lunch. Church lasted all of two weeks, before Lyn called them “faith-addled idiots” and stormed out in the middle of a sermon, leaving me apologizing to everyone while beating a hasty retreat.
I pass Lyn a bottle of water, and she hands me a home-made sandwich. Turkey, with spicy mustard. I make a face at the sprouts, but Lyn is making me eat them because she thinks I need to eat healthier.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says.
“Most bats can’t perceive colour, but some in the old world can. They can, however, see in black and white, and use their echolocation to aid in perception.”
Lyn makes a face. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking about?”
I smile. “Because I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
I've Been Thinking, pt. 1 of 2 (Short Story)
(note: I've been writing a lot, and figured I'd share some early drafts. This one hasn't been thorougly edited yet, but I think the core of it is more or less finished. I'm posting it in two parts, with the second part coming up on Sunday. Enjoy. -D.S.)
I've Been Thinking
D.S. Percival (March, 2012.)
“I’ve been thinking,” Lyn says as I brush my teeth before going to bed. She is sitting on the toilet – lid down – painting her toenails and wearing an old Motorhead T-shirt she picked out of a thrift store a few years ago, when doing that sort of thing was considered “cool”.
I don’t say anything, and not just because I have a toothbrush in my mouth. Lyn “has been thinking” since the day I met her, and she voices her thoughts without any prompting. Often, without much tact, either.
A few years ago, after we’d been together for at least two years, she said “I’ve been thinking about how bats perceive colour,” out of nowhere. Considering how we had just made love, and I had, in fact, just rolled off her, I found myself wondering when she had the time to think about bats and their perception to colour. Had this thought just popped into her head, or had she been ruminating on it during the lovemaking? And if she had been thinking about bats during sex, what did that say of my skills in the bedroom? Luckily, I knew her well enough by then to not be offended or worried.
Much.
Had this happened during our first time, or during the first year, I’m sure I would have turned into some sort of nervous wreck, like Woody Allen in pretty much any movie he’s ever made.
This time, however, she just looks at me with her large brown eyes – almost black, really, with an Asian slant – and waits for me to say something. I spit foam into the sink, rinse away toothpaste, and look at her.
“You’ve been thinking?” I prompt.
“Yes.”
“About?”
“About the absence of God.”
I chuckle, and head into the bedroom. She follows me, with only half her nails painted. She crawls into bed behind me, her skin cold and her feet colder.
“You’re an atheist, hun,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But you’ve been thinking about the absence of God?”
“Yes.”
She turns out the light and stays quiet.
“Lyn? Are you going to finish your thought?”
“Eventually,” she says, and drifts off to sleep.
***
We’re sitting on the couch, a couple days later, watching a hockey game. Lyn is wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top. She is shivering in the cold air, but doesn’t want to get up to wear thicker clothes – she’s instead wrapped herself in one of those half blankets that offers no real warming value. Her legs are draped out across my lap, and I am massaging her feet.
“So about the absence of God,” she says as the game goes into commercials.
“Right,” I say, not at all surprised by her picking up where she left off. As I said, she does this. I’m used to it.
“If God doesn’t exist, and has never existed, where does the universe come from?”
“Isn’t the idea that God never existed kind of the central point of atheism?”
“Yes. What’s your point?” she asks.
“Shouldn’t you have an answer for this already, being an atheist and all?”
“You’re an atheist too, Adam,” she points out, needlessly.
“So?”
“So you could just answer the question, silly.” She waves her foot in my face, bopping me on the nose.
I grab her by the ankle and kiss her foot. “Touche, woman.”
She squeals. Lyn has always been ticklish. “Stop. I’m trying to have a serious conversation.”
“Fine, fine.” I resume massaging.
A commercial goes by where we don’t say anything, instead watching a woman solve all the problems of her life simply by changing laundry detergent. I find myself wishing I could find laundry detergent that did that.
“So, do you have the answer?” she asks.
“What?”
“Where did the universe come from, if God doesn’t exist?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I never really thought about it.”
“Oh,” is all she says.
I’m curious. “Why are you asking?”
“If there is no God, then that means that the universe, and everything in it, is random.”
I nod.
“That means everything – you, me, Walmart, the Beatles, Yellowstone national park, the Vancouver Canucks – it’s all random. Nothing exists according to a plan.”
“I don’t think Wal-Mart or The Beatles would agree with you on that one. They had some pretty big plans.”
“But it’s just random. Wal-mart was made because that guy – what’s his name? – saw an opportunity and took it. The Beatles are around only because John and Paul lived in the same neighbourhood as kids. The Vancouver Canucks only exist because –”
“ –Because God wanted to punish the West Coast with a hockey team even less successful than the goddamn Leafs,” I say. Luongo is in net, and he’s not doing well.
Lyn mutters something in mandarin, and hits me with a pillow. “There’s no use talking to you, Adam.”
But she isn’t angry when she says it, and a moment later, she curls into my body and puts her head on my chest, tucking her feet in between the cushions.
It is 3:23 am. I know this because I have been checking on the clock every ten minutes or so. The bedroom is dark, lit only the nearby stuttering streetlight and the safety lights of the street-cleaning truck. I haven’t been to sleep yet.
“Adam?” She asks again, placing her hand lightly on my shoulder. I can feel her hair on my neck.
I pretend I am asleep. I don’t want to turn, because then she will see I’ve been crying, silently, into my pillow for the last two hours.
She kisses the back of my neck and goes back to sleep.
Two days later. We’re driving to Nanaimo to see her aunt. I’m behind the wheel, and she has her bare feet up on the dashboard, her legs catching the sunlight. An old Willie Dixon album is playing on the stereo, until she grabs my ipod and impulsively changes it to Magical Mystery Tour.
“Why’d you do that?” I ask. “I was listening to that.”
“I don’t want any more sad bastard music,” she says. “The Beatles are happy.”
“Seriously? The Beatles are happy?”
“Yes.”
“What about ‘She’s Leaving Home’? Or ‘Yesterday’? Or, hell, ‘Run for your Life?’”.
She scowls, and pokes me with a pointed toe. “Okay, those songs are sad. But they’re a different kind of sad than this sad bastard music.”
“How so?”
“When the Beatles are sad, they’re still happy with life. It’s like, things are sad now, but on the whole, life is good.”
I don’t say anything as I change lanes.
I've Been Thinking
D.S. Percival (March, 2012.)
“I’ve been thinking,” Lyn says as I brush my teeth before going to bed. She is sitting on the toilet – lid down – painting her toenails and wearing an old Motorhead T-shirt she picked out of a thrift store a few years ago, when doing that sort of thing was considered “cool”.
I don’t say anything, and not just because I have a toothbrush in my mouth. Lyn “has been thinking” since the day I met her, and she voices her thoughts without any prompting. Often, without much tact, either.
A few years ago, after we’d been together for at least two years, she said “I’ve been thinking about how bats perceive colour,” out of nowhere. Considering how we had just made love, and I had, in fact, just rolled off her, I found myself wondering when she had the time to think about bats and their perception to colour. Had this thought just popped into her head, or had she been ruminating on it during the lovemaking? And if she had been thinking about bats during sex, what did that say of my skills in the bedroom? Luckily, I knew her well enough by then to not be offended or worried.
Much.
Had this happened during our first time, or during the first year, I’m sure I would have turned into some sort of nervous wreck, like Woody Allen in pretty much any movie he’s ever made.
This time, however, she just looks at me with her large brown eyes – almost black, really, with an Asian slant – and waits for me to say something. I spit foam into the sink, rinse away toothpaste, and look at her.
“You’ve been thinking?” I prompt.
“Yes.”
“About?”
“About the absence of God.”
I chuckle, and head into the bedroom. She follows me, with only half her nails painted. She crawls into bed behind me, her skin cold and her feet colder.
"What?"
“You’re an atheist, hun,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But you’ve been thinking about the absence of God?”
“Yes.”
She turns out the light and stays quiet.
“Lyn? Are you going to finish your thought?”
“Eventually,” she says, and drifts off to sleep.
***
We’re sitting on the couch, a couple days later, watching a hockey game. Lyn is wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top. She is shivering in the cold air, but doesn’t want to get up to wear thicker clothes – she’s instead wrapped herself in one of those half blankets that offers no real warming value. Her legs are draped out across my lap, and I am massaging her feet.
“So about the absence of God,” she says as the game goes into commercials.
“Right,” I say, not at all surprised by her picking up where she left off. As I said, she does this. I’m used to it.
“If God doesn’t exist, and has never existed, where does the universe come from?”
“Isn’t the idea that God never existed kind of the central point of atheism?”
“Yes. What’s your point?” she asks.
“Shouldn’t you have an answer for this already, being an atheist and all?”
“You’re an atheist too, Adam,” she points out, needlessly.
“So?”
“So you could just answer the question, silly.” She waves her foot in my face, bopping me on the nose.
I grab her by the ankle and kiss her foot. “Touche, woman.”
She squeals. Lyn has always been ticklish. “Stop. I’m trying to have a serious conversation.”
“Fine, fine.” I resume massaging.
A commercial goes by where we don’t say anything, instead watching a woman solve all the problems of her life simply by changing laundry detergent. I find myself wishing I could find laundry detergent that did that.
“So, do you have the answer?” she asks.
“What?”
“Where did the universe come from, if God doesn’t exist?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I never really thought about it.”
“Oh,” is all she says.
I’m curious. “Why are you asking?”
“If there is no God, then that means that the universe, and everything in it, is random.”
I nod.
“That means everything – you, me, Walmart, the Beatles, Yellowstone national park, the Vancouver Canucks – it’s all random. Nothing exists according to a plan.”
“I don’t think Wal-Mart or The Beatles would agree with you on that one. They had some pretty big plans.”
“But it’s just random. Wal-mart was made because that guy – what’s his name? – saw an opportunity and took it. The Beatles are around only because John and Paul lived in the same neighbourhood as kids. The Vancouver Canucks only exist because –”
“ –Because God wanted to punish the West Coast with a hockey team even less successful than the goddamn Leafs,” I say. Luongo is in net, and he’s not doing well.
Lyn mutters something in mandarin, and hits me with a pillow. “There’s no use talking to you, Adam.”
But she isn’t angry when she says it, and a moment later, she curls into my body and puts her head on my chest, tucking her feet in between the cushions.
***
“Adam?”
“Adam?”
It is 3:23 am. I know this because I have been checking on the clock every ten minutes or so. The bedroom is dark, lit only the nearby stuttering streetlight and the safety lights of the street-cleaning truck. I haven’t been to sleep yet.
“Adam?” She asks again, placing her hand lightly on my shoulder. I can feel her hair on my neck.
I pretend I am asleep. I don’t want to turn, because then she will see I’ve been crying, silently, into my pillow for the last two hours.
She kisses the back of my neck and goes back to sleep.
***
Two days later. We’re driving to Nanaimo to see her aunt. I’m behind the wheel, and she has her bare feet up on the dashboard, her legs catching the sunlight. An old Willie Dixon album is playing on the stereo, until she grabs my ipod and impulsively changes it to Magical Mystery Tour.
“Why’d you do that?” I ask. “I was listening to that.”
“I don’t want any more sad bastard music,” she says. “The Beatles are happy.”
“Seriously? The Beatles are happy?”
“Yes.”
“What about ‘She’s Leaving Home’? Or ‘Yesterday’? Or, hell, ‘Run for your Life?’”.
She scowls, and pokes me with a pointed toe. “Okay, those songs are sad. But they’re a different kind of sad than this sad bastard music.”
“How so?”
“When the Beatles are sad, they’re still happy with life. It’s like, things are sad now, but on the whole, life is good.”
I don’t say anything as I change lanes.
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