The ones that get away

"You're in late."

"Can't sleep."

The Waffle House is empty but for Catherine, John, and the cook at the grill.

"What can I get you?"

"Decaf? And maybe some browns. With ham and tomatoes," he says, refusing to use the Waffle House scattered, splattered, whatever code for hash browns.

"'kay," she says and smiles.

She comes back and pours his coffee after calling his order to the cook. Then she pours herself a cup and sits with him.

"You okay?" she asks.

"More or less," he answers, and sips at the coffee.

"Which one?"

He smiles. "Less, I guess. I can't sleep."

"Girl troubles?"

"No. Brain troubles. Can't stop thinking. That gets my heart racing. That makes me overheat, which means I can't sleep. No sense just laying there sweating."

"Well, whatcha thinkin' about, Johnny?"

"Today. December tenth. Seven years ago today, I was sitting in a courthouse, reading old records on film. Piece of crap case. I had a current case on the guy. He'd tried to kill his wife, then got divorced, and then tried to kill his girlfriend, almost the exact same circumstances. He'd get jealous, stressed, angry, and try to kill whoever was around. But the rest of the time he was Mister Mild. The courts had just slapped him on the wrists."

"Anybody I know?"

"No, I don't think so. I wanted to violate him back, force the judge to make him do some time. He was bound to kill somebody sometime, if he ever ended up dating or marrying somebody small enough."

"Little fella?"

"Yeah. Little, pathetic. Lifetime alcoholic."

"You sure it's nobody I know?"

He laughs. "So I'd dug back on him. Turned out he was referenced in an old missing persons case. He'd been married five times. One of these earlier wives had a son when they married."

He drinks some more coffee. "A five-year-old son. Money's tight. Times are tough. Marriage gets stressful."

He looks her in the eyes like he's asking her for help.

"And then the son disappears. No ransom notes, no witnesses. Just poof-- no more little boy."

She makes a sad face. "That's awful."

"They do newspaper articles, they offer what little reward they can afford, nothing ever comes of it. The kid never shows up again."

"They thought your guy did it?"

"Nope. He was never a suspect. Combination of bad detective work and his sometimes-mild manners."

He holds the hot coffee cup in his hands, warming them.

"But I didn't think he did that one, either. Until I was looking at that old film. There was a copy of a newspaper article in there. Local paper interviewed the mother. They had a picture. She was sitting on the couch for the interview. My guy wasn't beside her. He was behind the couch. A few feet behind the couch, with his back against the wall and his arms folded over his chest.

"Not beside her. Not holding her hand, not right behind the couch with a hand on her shoulder. And the look on his face. That was guilt, not grief."

They both drink some more coffee.

"It fit him like a glove," he says. "New husband, young wife. He gets jealous, just like he'd always do later. But it's not another man. It's the kid. It's the love she has for the kid. He can never compete with that.

"And right when I see him in this picture, right when it crashes in on me that he's the one who got rid of the kid, my cell phone rings. And I answer it, and it's my mother telling me that my brother's first child has just been born. My niece, eventually my goddaughter."

"So now, every year when we celebrate her birthday, I sing the song and cheer when she blows out the candles, and all the while I'm really thinking about that little boy who would be just a few years younger than me if he was still alive. I wonder what he did with him, and if he even remembers doing it."

His browns come up, and Catherine goes to pick them up. She deposits them on the table with a bottle of Tabasco and pats his hand.

"At least you got him, didn't you?"

"No," he says. "No, I did not."

My Project for a New American Century: Step Two

Fuel Economy

We use too much oil for our own good. Fuck global warming. Fuck the planet. I'm talking about national security here. Oil is bad news. Everyone with any sense knows we need to stop using so much.

If we weren't American, we'd tax the living shit out of gas. Or we'd legislate higher corporate average fuel economies. Yeah. But then we wouldn't be law-hating, government-fearing Americans. So what we need is a free market solution. We need cash incentives in the marketplace, dammit.

I have just the solution. Untaxed cash awards for vitriolic put-downs doled out by car salesmen at customers intent on buying gas guzzlers.

"You wanna see the Yukon, huh? What, so people will be so distracted by the size of your car that they won't notice your enormous, fat ass?"

That's $300.

"This here's the Dodge Viper. It's designed for bald men with small penises, so basically, dinky, it's your dream car."

That's $750.

"You and your wife want to test drive the Hemi Magnum R/T? Hey, why not? If I had to fuck such an ugly woman, I'd want to crawl in a hearse, too."

A cool grand.

Additionally, we'll collect statistics on the average fuel economy of the vehicles sold by each salesman. Every year, the salesman in each county with the highest average fuel economy gets a free, mail-order bride from the country of his choice (certified disease- and mafia-connections-free) and a lifetime supply of green sportcoats.

Walk with me, my countrymen, into our brave future.

Magic

I left work today tired, but somewhat satisfied. A wrong had been righted. A kind of tawdry, squalid little wrong. And another more sizable, potentially a legitimate evil, wrong had probably been squelched before it came to pass. Some people's egos were trampled on in the process, and for once I actually did feel a little bad about that, even though they deserved it. But I had helped accomplish some good, and other good people had helped with it, too. It was kind of a good day.

And when I got outside, I was dazzled. The weather has been shit here for weeks. Particularly bad since Monday afternoon, when we got hammered with the first of two serious bouts of winter storm this week. But today, the clouds broke and I got outside just in time to see the sun before it set.

It was very low on the horizon, starting to fall behind the mountains, and it shot a pure, golden light straight up the streets downtown. It shot down on the water and bounced back up at shallow deflection, giving us twin beams of that pure, golden light.

It was gorgeous. White buildings turned to solid gold. Red brick turned to shades of red, brown and gold. Every inch of downtown with a line of sight to the water was bathed in gold. And it seemed entirely rational, for the moment, to believe in magic.

The Long Reach of Sir Walter Raleigh

“I got hooked on these when I was a dumb kid,” he says, picking up her pack of cigarettes and shaking it gently.

“Me, too. It’s a comfort.” She smiles, softly blowing a cloud of smoke over the edge of the balcony.

“Yeah," he puts them down decisively. "But then I really got hooked on them in the CAP. They've got Marlboros there, but they’re not real Marlboros. Fake packaging. Real tobacco. The old stuff.”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah, oh god is right. With all the cancer and addictions and everything else. It was hard to kick when I got back. The counter-addiction treatments aren’t a real treat. Headaches, impotence.”

She giggles.

“It wore off,” he says through a lopsided grin.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Quite a while back, I started writing a serial which has since been titled Break to Bind. It started out on the William Gibson Board, then migrated to Dead Channel, where I update it about once every one to two weeks on average. It's not great literature. I joke that it's my un-illustrated graphic novel. I use it as a learning tool, as a means of forcing myself to write on a regular basis, to work through the types of scenes that I'm lousy with, to commit to continuing and eventually finishing a sizable work.

When I first started it, some people commented (positively) that it reminded them of Watchmen, the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. At the time, I'd never heard of Watchmen, honestly. And I avoided picking it up until just recently. I'm reading it now.

Holy crap, says the articulate wannabe writer, it's bloody fantastic. I laugh out loud, make the heavy-metal-devil-horns-sign at the book occasionally, and try to explain the genius of the climax scenes to my wife as she looks at me like she's humoring the nutbar. This is really good stuff. Dark, dark, terribly dark, but no darker than many stories I have to tell. Too bad I can't write them as well as Moore can, and I can only draw stick figures.

Anyway, there are certainly similarities between Break to Bind and Watchmen, but thankfully there's a good bit of difference. I'm not done yet, but I'm confident that some of the messages I'm going for, which are uncharacteristically upbeat for me, are probably very different from the messages that Moore is headed toward. The ploy of using narrative combined with occasional 'found documents' is uncomfortably close, unfortunately. I swear I just started reading Watchmen.

But thankfully, the similarities don't really bother me that much. I like my characters, I like what they're about, and it doesn't matter that a) it seems similar to Moore's story in some superficial ways and that b) Moore's story is infinitely better than mine. There was a time in my life when I would have said "oh, something similar's been done, and done much better, so why bother." I'm glad I'm over that.

It's All My Fault

I admit it: I'm responsible for monotheism. I was an enthusiastic young lawyer, shooting for partner in a firm with some fantastic clients, among them several gods who must remain nameless under the terms of my contract. I was dazzled, of course. I was trying to impress them. Though I didn't see it at the time, these gods were not exactly top-shelf, if you know what I mean. They were past their prime, rarely got any tithes, hardly ever saw a sacrifice. Times were lean, and the creditors were starting to come sniffing.

No fewer than three castles of gold were foreclosed upon in my first year with the firm. They had multiple mortgages out in different names-- it was a fucking mess. My clients were looking at doing some serious time, considering their extremely fraudulent financial activities. Ever read any Greek myths about punishments doled out by immortals? Yeah. I said serious time, I meant Serious Fucking Time.

So I pitch this crazy idea: I drop a dollar or two in the pockets of certain talented 'prophets,' my clients build up what very little juice they still have left to kick in a few convenient, though minor, miracles for these 'prophets,' and we start a new mythos moving. A burning bush here, a fish dinner there, and all the sudden, you've got people's attention.

We spread the word that there is only one God. And, wait for it: none of my clients are Him.

As a matter of fact, my clients were nothing more than myths... yeah, that's right, Biff. They never existed, so take your liens and your judgements and your writs and just fuck off.

My clients went for it. Not like they had any better options. But then, I have to admit, things got a little out of hand.

I underestimated the gullibility of mankind. I used to complain about how stupid people were, about how they couldn't wrap their heads around all the different variables in a problem, they had to boil it all down to some simple, stupid, singular explanation for everything. Simplicity was always better than veracity. Well. The chumps latched onto the monotheism gag like nobody's business.

It spread like the Spanish flu, and was nearly as deadly. Whole civilizations fell to it. A few of the gods made a good stand against it, but the reductions in tithes and sacrifices meant hard times for everybody. So the collectors started closing in on all of them. Before we knew it, we had thousands of divine clients, all wanting in on the "I'm only a myth" defense against their creditors.

So here we are, four thousand years later, in an endless cycle of holy wars. And all I've got to show for it is a three-thousand-year-old BMW chariot with the spokes rotting out, and a roster of deadbeat clients as long as Ayman al-Zawahiri's beard.

Yeah. Monotheism. Great fucking idea that was.

I lied

Okay, so the rain only paused in Seattle. And then restarted today, only for me to find that my sunroof is leaking. Water is dripping right through the control console for it, which contains, oh, I don't know, at least four switches and god knows what other electrical components. Reminds me that when we bought it, I was thinking sunroof=extra weight at top of car, maintenance issues, road noise--bah! It's a sunroof! It'll be cool!

I think my B5 was built on a Friday, and the Turks were in a hurry to get to Jum'ah. That, or the former East Germans doing all the weather seals were in a hurry to go stand in a line.

They don't have to do it anymore. It just comforts them.

When I'm dressed in white, send roses to me

The rains stop for hours, and the sun comes out for minutes.

The Schizoid Trio breaks into the green room. They sway, slide and thump, moan and mouth-breathe, teeth bared, arms spread.

The Salsa Lady pauses on the sidewalk, presses play. Clamshell liberation draws her out through her ears. She poses, vertical jazz hands. Nods and steps. Arms work, feet accelerate. She spins, sings out with the beat, dat da-dat-dat-daa! Ever gaining momentum, spiral and slide down Third.

The rain has stopped in Seattle.

Welcome to Red's Recovery Room

So don't be an asshole. Go to Amazon for a minute, just to listen to a few soundbites off the Clodhopper album, Red's Recovery Room. Here. I'll even give you a link: Bam.

God damn it. You can buy this thing for $3.98.

If you don't want to pick through at random, then at least check the clips for Dinah, Walking Tune, Cafe Joli and Red's Recovery Room. That's just a tickle of the sound in this album, which is fucking amazing. I've had this thing for years, and it never ceases to stupify me.

Cafe Joli is, as I and at least a few others have said before, probably the best damned song ever written and recorded. You can feel this song 'just walkin' down the street' wherever you are. If it doesn't put a smile on your face, then bring down the colors and surrender right now, because you're already dead.