Well, here I am with my second short fiction story stored in my little political cloud. [smiles] Public, yes, but seen by very few.
I know this will seem strange to many but as a writer it's something I have to do. I've been an okay political essayist for 12 years and I often worry it's detrimental to my mental health. Not only do I need a different mental writing path, but I have to see what happens after being a fiction writer for a real multi-year effort. I doubt very much it will be noteworthy in any aspect, but you can't proclaim failure as a writer without walking and working through it first, write through it and see what happens.
I'm positive there's no harm here, and I don't think Hunter, Markos or Susan will mind. Please be well, gentle people.
January 24, 2015
Richard Crosby shut the refrigerator door just as his phone chimed a text, glancing at it as he placed a thermos pitcher on the counter.
“Ah, good, fifteen minutes early but that doesn’t matter.” He looked across the counter to Helen Ward, who was editing a file on her iPad. “Jason Katlinger is watching Elaine’s softball game with me.”
“Oh!” Helen’s right hand flew to her temple, as if to ward off an imaginary spike that had streaked into her cranium. She slightly shook her head, massaging an eyebrow. “How you can be friends with that man….”
Richard looked at her with a benign patience. “He’s a good person, and quite valuable at my company.”
“Ugh!” Helen looked at him with a fierce wonderment. “So you say, he’s always been a completely offensive ass to me,” she said.
“He provokes you because you let him,” Richard said gently.
Helen gave him a steely glare, pursing her lips but saying nothing. The doorbell rang, Elaine happily calling out “I’ll get it!” just as Richard knew she would. He hid a small smile as Helen, flustered, ran a hand over her hair and fleetingly checked the buttons of her silk blouse.
Voices from beyond the hallway, and then Jason Katlinger almost flounced into the kitchen in his breezy way, holed black Keds under baggy sweats, a red tee shirt peeking underneath a green Boston Celtics sweatshirt, curly black hair and merry eyes framed under a plain red baseball cap.
Panties off for this, Helen said to herself. It’s like quantum physics, no one can explain it.
“My man!” Jason said with an easy happiness as he came up to Richard, both of them touching forearms in the Bashbrothers way. Helen’s eyes fluttered sideways.
“Well well well!” Jason said with happy relish as he saw Helen, running a hand over his rough Saturday whiskers. “Good thing I shaved!”
Helen remained immobile, stiffly pretending to read her email. Richard gave Jason a rather pointed look, then continued to squeeze fresh lemons, a pleasant summer citrus smell suffusing the kitchen.
Jason gave Helen a quick practiced look-over, a big woman only an inch shorter than he and around 170 pounds, classy and trim as always with leather sandals, maroon slacks and a light orange silk shirt. Light brown hair was curled and fell around her shoulders, a rather ordinary but certainly not un-pretty face partially hidden from view as she bent over her iPad.
Been awhile, Jason said inwardly, since someone climbed those hills.
“So are we picking up sandwiches for the game?” Jason asked Richard.
“No, they have a good hot dog stand at the field,” Richard said.
“Ah, baseball and hotdogs,” Jason said happily. “They go together, like America and defense spending!”
Richard smiled and nodded shortly. “Like guns and drinking,” he said.
Jason’s eyebrows flew up with his grin as he pointed appreciatively at Richard. “Like tits and the weather!” he exclaimed.
Richard chortled shortly while Helen’s head instantly rose. “What?” she asked with incredulous anger.
Jason turned to her and held his hands open. “Every time you turn on the TV for the weather you always say ‘nice tits!’” He looked at her as if explaining the sky was blue. “They go together,” he said affirmatively.
“Oh!” Helen replied, her hand flying to her temple again, shaking her head as she closed her eyes. “You,” she said fiercely, nostrils flaring, “you are a scurrilous…disgusting…scamp, who takes a perverse delight in provoking me!”
Out of nowhere a wobble of real hurt distorted the words provoking me. Dismayed, Helen looked at her hands, surprise straightening Jason and making him look at her thoughtfully. He glanced at Richard, who was looking at Jason with a disapproving reproach.
Helen’s phone chimed a text. “Jesus, Carol is caught in traffic,” she said, putting the phone down. Carol was Richard’s wife, who Helen was waiting for.
Richard looked at Jason steadily, then resumed squeezing lemons. An uncomfortable silence settled over the kitchen, Richard working steadily while Helen pretended to read her mail on the sofa.
Jason restlessly rubbed his hands on his sweats and then sat at a barstool. “I watched that Richard Dreyfus movie last night, Mr. Holland’s Opus,” he said to Richard. “He’s twenty years into his career and this knockout student falls in love with him. He’s a little confused and flattered, sort of goes along with it.”
Jason thoughtfully rubbed his jaw while Richard listened intently. “She leaves him a note to meet him at the train station to start a life in New York, he goes down there and while he’s away his wife discovers these tiny clues of infatuation, she knows something has happened here, but she also knows he would never, ever betray her.”
Jason nodded in a small way. “He comes home after sending the girl to New York, she’s dozing on the couch, he kneels down and tells her he loves her.”
Jason sighed. “She opens her eyes and says ‘I know you do.’” Richard’s tongue slightly passed over his lips. “I wonder what that’s like, to tell someone you love them and have it be such a total reality they smile and say ‘I know you do,’” he said.
“Jason,” Richard said with benign look, “have you been reading Raymond Carver again?”
“So?” Jason replied defensively. “Better than Barbara Taylor Bradford.”
“Hey, that was just one title, and A Woman of Substance is a good book,” Richard said with an edge of sharpness. “Beyotch,” he added aggressively.
Jason gave a wry look and tilted his head, then looked at Helen, who had been watching them with a thoughtful wariness. “I think about love, what it is, what it means, what it does to a person.” He smiled slightly and looked at her easily. “I suppose that surprises you,” he said.
Helen’s mouth opened slightly and she nodded with an airy affirmation. “Yes, yes as a matter of fact, it does surprise me,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you the one who had sex with your friend’s boss’s wife at a Fourth of July party?”
Jason’s hands immediately opened. “She hit on me, I did not know who she was, to this day Larry says I did him a favor,” Jason said affirmatively.
“Oh!” Helen said again, her hand brushing against her temple. She shook her head. “Aren’t you the one who spiked the punch at poor Emily Barton’s birthday party so that the hot tub turned into a titty bonanza, bouncy-bouncy boobies everywhere?” she asked sharply.
“I categorically deny that,” Jason said flatly. “As if I was some creep who would put a roofie in the punch,” he said indignantly. He looked at Richard with a total innocence, his hands open. “Emily said to bring rum punch, I brought rum punch,” he said.
“What did you do it?” Richard asked with some wonderment.
Jason grinned. “Found a good recipe from the Cooking Channel, squeezed fresh juices for everything, even pomegranates to turn it red. Scrumptious!” Jason said happily, kissing his fingertips. “Then Bicardi 151 for the rum, that shit is lethal if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said chuckling.
Richard smiled, while Helen looked at him with a frozen disgust. “Rum punch,” Jason said with a satisfied emphasis. He opened his hands to them both with an earnest appeal. “It’s not like a started an orgy,” he said.
“Oh!” Helen said yet again, another imaginary spike pounding her temple before her fluttering hand could stop it. “Is it not true,” she said with a certain forbearance, “that since you’ve worked at Richard’s company you’ve significantly dated three women but, as they say, never got to the move-in stage?”
“How do you know? Richard asked mildly.
“Yeah,” Jason said with a sharp incredulity, “how the hell do you know?”
Helen held up her palm as if the light of truth were within. “Is that not true?” she asked.
Jason gave Richard a rather long look, then gazed at Helen steadily. “Well, I would say two, but basically yes,” Jason replied as mildly. “So?”
“Is love a choice?” Helen said with a feminine alertness. “Do you get to a point with a certain person and say, ‘I choose love with you?’”
“Get over it,” Jason said with a calm dismissiveness. “Love is irrational, for some reason a person makes you all quaky, no matter what you do you can’t live without them.” He shook his a little in wonderment. “Some people, it happens at first sight.”
“She’s onto something, though,” Richard said. “That’s what the spiritual and religious people do, they make deliberate choices in behavior and then, well, a relationship with god happens.”
Jason looked at him skeptically. “I’m not becoming a monk to fall in love,” he said.
“That’s not what he’s saying,” Helen said patiently. “If you make certain choices in behavior long enough, could love then happen? Could someone who you never thought you’d be in love with suddenly become ‘the one’ because you made yourself open to it?”
Richard kept the skeptical look to his face. In an honest, endearing movement Helen opened a palm. “I don’t know, myself,” she said.
Richard looked on intently, while Jason appraised her warily. “What would these life choices for love be?” Jason asked evenly.
“Surprisingly close to religious ones, which, I guess, the religious people would say isn’t surprising at all,” Helen said. “Every living thing, every one, you treat with dignity and respect,” she said with a steely look at Jason. “Understand and live equality to such a level you’re automatically good and harmonious with everyone you meet. Any choice, any option presented, always choose kindness.”
Richard had been pouring lemonade into a big plastic portable thermos, nodding with a pleased satisfaction. Jason leaned back in his stool, looking at Helen with a new awareness.
Helen swallowed and raised her chin. “I’ve been trying,” she said. Her lips tightened as she looked at Jason. “I suppose that surprises you,” she said.
Jason was, in fact, surprised, but for once he kept his mouth shut, looking at the counter lamely.
“Dad, it’s time to put the bats in the car!” Elaine’s muted voice came from the garage.
Richard dried his hands and picked up the thermos of lemonade. “I’m helping Elaine for a few minutes,” he said to pointedly to Jason, giving him precisely the same look of reproach he had earlier. He waited until Jason made an impatient gesture of acquiescence, then nodded with satisfaction, walking out of the room.
Helen smoothed the fabric of her slacks, raising her chin a little. Jason cleared his throat and stood up.
“I’m sorry things hurt with that remark about the weather,” he said evenly, looking at her plain in the face. “I didn’t know it cut like that, I won't do it again,” he said.
Helen swallowed and nodded mutely, looking back at him as evenly. “All right,” she said.
Jason nodded a little abashedly. “Okay,” he said. He waited a moment, liking the look of her face as it was framed by her pretty hair. “I don’t suppose, you know, if you’re busy tonight…”
“Heh!” Helen tossed her hair and put her hands on her hips, looking at him as if he had suggested climbing Mt. Everest.
He opened his hands with a small earnestness, still a little embarrassed. “I know you think I’m a rake and a lark so I never thought to ask before, but, well, you know, maybe if I made different choices things might be different,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”
Helen took a deep breath and tilted her head, looking at him appraisingly.
“Honestly, I would have asked before, but I figured my rep ruined it.” He chewed his lip a little. “I’m just like any person, I want to know what love is, to have a special person to share it with, to experience living it every day.”
Helen smiled for the first time that afternoon, pretty and poised in the afternoon light. She put a hand on his arm. “I know you do,” she said.