Feeling Bummed (w/ 2 stories)

so i wrote this story for class called Prestidigitation and when it came up for workshop, i got that nice thick moment of silence where i could immediately tell everyone hated it. that made me sad.

but then again, another piece called Colmanara Wildcat; Blood Ruby got accepted into the schools literary journal, which isn't so easy to do. One of my professors, who i've only had one class with (but she's my adviser) said she really liked it and was even thinking about it. She read it multiple times. that's cool. And when it was up for workshop, my professor Drew slammed his papers down and yelled at me because i never speak in workshop but i wrote a beautiful story. i just needed to say all that to cheer myself up.

But still, my latest piece fell flat on it's face. that sucks.

Prestidigitation:

unrevised edition (cause i haven't gotten to it yet)

Prestidigitation

Quinn is juggling at the airport. She stands in a back corner at the end of the terminal, tossing alien looking bowling pins up in the air. They spin in oblong circles, hanging in the air for a breath before being tossed back into the rhythm of the thing. Quinn makes the move to start juggling two in one hand. The pins fall to the floor.

By her look it seems as if she will start crying, eyebrows squelched up, lips tight. But she never does, each time she picks them back up, and starts over. Each time, she keeps the pins going for a moment before they fall back to the floor. Each time her face tightens and her eyes moisten. But she never comes close to crying.

And somewhere, above the cloud line, an airplane is cruising towards her tiny airport in Montana. Soon it will land, and a hundred people with shirts sticking to the small of their back will debark and wander, the grounds crew will do what the grounds crew does, the cleaners clean, and Quinn will fly to Las Vegas for the second time in her life, on the third plane ride she's ever taken.

One month ago, Quinn's father took his family on vacation. Las Vegas is not a good place for a family vacation. Las Vegas is about three things: drinking, slightly clothed women, and loosing money. It is not a good place to bring a fifteen year old daughter, a twelve year old son, and a cautious wife. But, running with the idea that Vegas had become Disneyland, Quinn's father took them anyway, and Quinn though this was just lame. But to a teenage girl, all things are lame, so she slouched and slogged her way through it, dejected at sharing a room with these people, wallowing in self pity and refusing to admit any of this to anyone, herself especially. They arrived at night, right when the pulse of the place was quickening, and Quinn was looking out the taxi window, chin in hand.

Masquerade. It was written down the side of the building in blue scripty lights. Neon against neon, a tower among towers, it was built of black stone and glass; a monolith, it seemed foreboding but irresistibly mysterious. Not warm and inviting like the other casinos; it attracted by curiosity.

Checked in, bags down, Quinn abandoned her parents on the casino floor and, unable to gamble or drink, she wrapped her boredom around her and walked along the colored carpet path. The dealers wore black shirts and cream colored vests, the pit bosses wore gray suits, the cocktail waitresses wore long dresses with high slits up the side so men were treated with flashes of garter and pale thigh. Everywhere there were curtains, large and thick like curtains on a stage, they hung down from the high ceilings. Regal things in deep colors, patterned by the fleur de le or curly lines like grape vines or complicated knots. Gold ropes held them, binded them to columns, hung down and frayed.

Quinn, looking up at them, strayed into the area she wasn't supposed to be in, where the slot machines squatted down like fathers patting the heads of children. But the crowd and lights and the general no-telling age she was guarded her anonymity and so she roamed free, choking on cigarette smoke, head throbbing to the bells and whirs of the machines, stomach turning at the sight of people injecting money into slim chances. She quickened her step and in three feet was utterly lost.

Any good casino follows one rule without fail: make the casino floor as disorienting as possible. If people don't know how to leave, they won't. Quinn looked back to where she had come from and all she saw was more slots and more people. Like a river, they all looked the same but different, a swarm that moved and pulsed as it hovered, faces replaced faces fluidly as people stepped up and left the tables. Wisps of smoke floated up with the body heat like lost souls, their owners sitting and smoking and drinking as mechanically as their money takers. Quinn felt a jolt of fear and sickness right in her chest, looked down at the carpet, and hoped she'd walk out an exit.

She walked, it seemed, for a good while, and she kept her head down until the carpet became stone looking tile and the sounds of the casino were mostly behind her. Loud still, but behind her. Looking up she heard the subtle sound of lazy water and a reflection along the walls and ceiling that had the look of light bouncing off a pool, but she could see no fountain. Beside her a pair of drunken business men with large mustaches called over to her to have a drink and sit with them. She walked down a short flight of stairs in front of her and slipped down the first corner she came to.

Quinn is juggling at the airport. She has a good flow going. She juggles two clubs in her right hand, then moves them to her left and manages to get through a cycle or two before she catches one on the wrong end and they go tumbling to the floor. The PA clicks on and announces that Quinn's flight is delayed by and hour. Quinn feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. She picks up the pins and juggles again.

The back halls of the Masquerade were designed to be twisty and labyrinth like, not for practicality, but at the whim of its designer. It felt underground, which it might have been, because it had the feeling of being in a part of the casino that couldn't be seen from the outside. Past restaurants and little shops of jewelry and tourist trinkets with chain curtains pulled down behind the glass doors, Quinn wandered. Every several feet a gas lantern burned, bolted to the wall, and the water light ebbed and flowed against the walls, a net of dim and warm light folding in on itself. Faintly, so faintly Quinn thought for a moment she was only imagining it, the sound of hollow water drips echoed in a cluttered rhythm.

She came out of a hallway designed to look like an alleyway, with a cobbled floor and storefronts that were supposed to be outside, and into a central circular chamber. In the center was a dead fountain, dried rose petals and coins the color of moss and dried blood lined the bottom and the little ledges and crooks at the base of the statuary, three cherubs holding a large, imperfect glass sphere. The foot traffic was still heavy in this area, Quinn figured it must connect most of the halls where the restaurants were and though it was late, people were still eating. She leaned against the wall near a gnarled figure of a women cut in stone. It seemed to be trapped in the wall and pushing to get out. The room was surrounded by similar figures, all with with small differences in form and expression.

She watched the flow of people, everyone going somewhere, nobody lost or wandering or looking around. The crowed was standard American vacationers, with variation. Older boys in jeans and knit shirts, fat women in turquoise shorts, men with fanny packs and black socks. There were the occasional Japanese business men in suits without ties and their wives without smiles. There were small flocks of women in their thirties, dressed up for bars and with a lingering scent of desperation and the even more desperate men who looked longingly at them as they passed. And, every now and again, a rare beautiful couple would stroll by, without care or hurry, dressed in evening ware, reeking of prosperity and elegance, and sometimes holding hands.

And with them, Quinn's mind followed. As she watched the beautiful couple stroll by, she daydreamed of power and calmness. Of evenings out to theaters and symphonies; the gowns the women wore with ease, as if red and black and green silk flowed from the ethereal parts of space and enveloped her body, where they belonged. Of a man who wore thousand dollar suits as if he were born in them, the ease and confidence he acquired wealth and ability, and of the generosity he showed his love: diamonds with smoky imperfections, laced in platinum, strung through silver threads. She watched the thirty-somethings bounce buy, springing up on high heals, skirts and blouses squirming around their bodies. She thought of their lives, with occupations simple and easy on time, like a hostess of one of these restaurants. She thought of evenings with friends, full mostly of laughter and alcohol (which, having been drunk twice in her life, sounded ideal to Quinn, who's fascination with those clear and amber spirits was still in its infancy). She thought of bar hopping, and sitting coyly on a leather stool, twisting boy's tongues to her whim and fancy.

She did not think what it would be like to become fat and wear turquoise shorts, but she did think of those families she saw walk by. She thought they all looked drastically more fascinating than her own. They looked like families who regularly vacationed in places like Las Vegas and New York and England and Paris and all the places she would only see in documentaries. They did not look like the kinds of families who lived in nowhere places like Montana where past times included horse riding, cow tipping, more horse riding, and (if she were more popular) parties at secluded barns with whole kegs of beer and spin the bottle and kissing in a pile of musty hey. They did not look like families who's conversations were dictated only by necessity, who's dinners were eaten individually, who's evenings were spent avoiding each other. They did not....

The sound of a dull and lonely violin deep inside a distant hall caught Quinn's ear. She looked up and over at an alleyway opposite her, and saw the violinist march slowly forward in dirge steps, preceded by his elongated shadow which danced and flickered on the faces of store windows in the gas light. He was dressed in a kind of Victorian mortician style, coat tails trailing by his knees, top hat angled down, obscuring his eyes. The musician strode to the opening of the alleyway and stood, silhouetted by the flame and water light, and played his song. He tugged long and whining tones out of the instrument, massaging sadness out of its wooden neck and slackened strings. Though he took his time he was careless with the song and its effect. The people walking by found themselves looking at their feet, moving swiftly and awkwardly out of the way, avoiding eye contact with the musician at all costs, afraid of the emotions the song may evoke if they spent too long with it. But Quinn stood, back to the wall, hands sandwiched in the small of her back, mesmerized and feeling nothing but longing.

The musician finished the song with a trailing note and, as if waking from a trance, he looked up and nodded at someone sitting on the other side of the fountain's statuary, who's head and shoulders refracted through the glass sphere, twisted and distorted though the thickness speckled with bubbles and whirls of color. The musician removed his top hat, wiped his brow absently, slid to the floor and as he began to tune the violin an arm shot into view from behind the fountain and flicked a black stub of a cigarette into the empty hall. Sparks flew from the tip and scattered out against the stone tiles, where they smoldered and glowed distantly.

He stood and stretched his arms above his head, yawning deeply like a cat. And like cat's do, he remained still and looked down the larger hallway to Quinn's left, as if something caught his eye that he was about to stalk and pounce upon. But instead he looked at the back of his wrist, though he wasn't wearing a watch as far as Quinn could see, and with his other hand he twirled a brass lighter between his fingers, snapping open and closing the lid. Then, unexpectedly, he looked right at Quinn. Not quickly or suddenly, just unexpectedly, and Quinn felt her breath catch somewhere in her throat. With a lasting click he closed the lighter and slipped his hands into the pockets of his frayed and faded black jeans, pulled out a stack of black poker chips and poured them into the musician's hat, to which the musician made no more reply then a nudge of his head downwards.

As the man walked towards Quinn he rolled the sleeves of his cream and coffee colored shirt which had the look of well worn, downy cotton. He stopped and stood and arm's length to her left and when Quinn moved her eyes down to find a spot somewhere between her feet and the fountain, she saw he was barefoot. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him pull another slim black cigarette from his shirt pocket, the quick click and glare of the lighter, a muted jingle of keys and with a practiced movement he unlocked a door Quinn couldn't see and held it open. Before he crept inside, he looked again at Quinn, who could see the head movement and felt the blood rush up into her neck and cheeks and ears and couldn't stop herself from looking back. She looked up into his gray, emotionless eyes, his pupils wide, glints of gold glimmered in the iris. His face was stone but he looked into her and through her and Quinn felt wholly naked, as if her life was spread out in front of her like a face up deck of cards. And then he was through the door and gone and Quinn still stared at the space where his gaze had been. The breath that caught in her throat earlier moved upwards and she swallowed, the sound seemed loud in the empty place.

A small piece of emptiness hung in the air for a moment before a very unexpected and very unwelcome clatter sounded at her feet. Quinn jerked and her heart pushed against her ribcage. A brightly decorated juggler's club rolled in a tight circle around her and came to rest against her shoe. A woman just outside Quinn's peripheral vision was tossing three other clubs casually into the air, looking up at their zenith, ignoring Quinn. The juggler was costumed in black and silver: knee high renaissance boots on top of tights with stripes of bright gray and black, an ostentatious high collared vest embroidered with glittering metallic thread, the sleeves of her black shirt loose and flowing like a courtly fencer. She stood jauntily, her weight on one leg, the other crossed, toe to the outside of her foot.

Quinn is juggling at the airport. She drops her clubs, looks worried, and picks them up. Three men walk down the hall towards her, joking amongst themselves. They are dressed in one piece jumpers, oil stains across the legs and stomach. They stop and watch Quinn for a moment, confused but smiling none the less. Quinn tries to ignore them but she feels the presence of audience. After a she drops the clubs, one of the men asks her if she can flip one behind her back. She says nothing but tries, the club comes up over her shoulder but she can't catch it in time, the rhythm is broken and the clubs fall to the floor. She tries again and fails, the men are reminded they have work, and move through an authorized personal only door. Quinn tries to flip the club behind her back twice more, fails twice, and changes back to her old routine.

Quinn picked up the juggler's club and scowled at her, but the juggler made no motion towards Quinn, no acknowledgment of her presence. Quinn stood awkwardly with the club in hand, wondering if she should lay it at the juggler's feet or just toss it aside. Tentatively she asked “What should I do with this?”

The juggler glanced at her then, the black feathers of her mask bobbing gently with her head. She considered Quinn for a moment, and cocked her head to the side, curiously. The nose of her mask was shaped like a beak, and with that and the feathers and the head movement she looked somewhat like a raven. With a smirk of her black colored lips, the juggler was somehow juggling the three clubs in one hand and with the other gestured for Quinn to toss the fourth back at her and then was somehow juggling with both hands again. Quinn, unsure of when or where to throw the club, hesitated for a second, which was long enough for the juggler to flash her an impatient eye movement. Shrugging and mostly hoping she would drop it, Quinn tossed the club underhand right at the juggler's head.

At the same time, the juggler thew another club at Quinn, who caught it and looked up in surprise and annoyance. The juggler showed no sign that she had caught the club or that any club exchange had happened, except for the fact that she had three clubs up in the air and Quinn held the fourth. Without encouragement, Quinn thew the club back at the juggler, the juggler thew a club at Quinn, who caught it, and Quinn was feeling a slight sense of déjà vu. When she threw the club back, a little more forcefully then was necessary, the juggler stopped and caught all four pins in perfect rhythm.
“You look bored.” the juggler said.
“I am” said Quinn.
The juggler held two clubs in each hand, and tossed one from each behind her back simultaneously, catching them without actually moving to do so. “Why is it girls like you are always bored?”
“I don't know” said Quinn.
“Of course you don't.”
“You wouldn't understand”
“I would. But I don't want to.” The juggler said as she walked slowly towards Quinn, still tossing clubs behind her back and bouncing on her knees as she stepped, bobbing to some inaudible music, looking far too bird-like. When she was a breath away from Quinn, she looked down into her and asked “do you want to?”
Quinn frowned and said “Do I want to what?”
“Feel bored.”
“No.”
“Good. Then hold these.” The juggler pushed the clubs into Quinn's chest, who held them awkwardly, feeling like one was about to slip from the crook in her elbow. The juggler pulled a brass key from her vest pocket and opened the same door the man went through earlier and went inside. The door stayed open and Quinn was very unsure of what to do, so she stood there, feeling one of the clubs sliding out of her grasp. “You coming?” the juggler yelled, mutedly.
“I guess,” said Quinn, though there was no guess really. She went through the door, which closed calmly behind her.

Quinn followed the juggler down a hallway of rough stones that hadn't been ground and polished to the flatness like that on the other side and up to a wooden spiral staircase where the juggler stopped and took back the clubs. The juggler moved swiftly up the stairs but with jerking motions, holding the clubs up under her armpits, elbows out a from her ribs a little. Quinn had to take them two at a time to keep up, and each step landed heavily, eliciting a small, high pitched sigh from the raw wood planks. She followed the juggler through several twists at the landing, moving through narrow hallways and narrower doors, feeling like she was being lead through some secret passage in some aging château.

And then, one of the doors opened into a warmth of light and body heat and Quinn found herself in something that was halfway between a banquet hall and tavern. The juggler tossed the clubs one by one in easy lops to a man dressed in a white and gold version of her same costume, who then tossed them over his shoulder carelessly, one by one, falling against a curtain and to the floor. The juggler sat beside the man and took a glass from him, sipping and making no motion or acknowledgment of Quinn.

The room was short but wide, the wall opposite her being thick, tinted windows that overlooked the casino floor below, mounted between black marble columns from which hung thin, transparent curtains, held back by thin silver strands of rope. The space in the middle was occupied by tables and lush leather chairs, love seats, and couches from different eras of style, each occupied by a member of the Masquerade's troupe. The place was awash in murmur, broken by crescendos of light laugher, exclaimed by joyous shouts. Quinn stood in the doorway, eyes wide and lips parted slightly. She was awestruck, as she probably should be, and a little overwhelmed by the general strangeness, and a little bit convinced that this, possibly, maybe, was slightly unreal. She found herself quickly turning that last thought away like a pin from a balloon.

She watched a man in a scarlet shirt and black vest with orange embroidery place carefully a thin, inflamed kebab stick in his mouth, swallowing the fire, and coughing up a shower of sparks and smoke, ash falling out and speckling his beard. She watched a woman absently balance three glass globes one on top the other in one hand as she talked with a white gloved gentlemen who was materializing playing cards and flicking them sharply across the room at a guitarist who was tuning his instrument. The guitarist moved his hand up to block the card which, just before impact, exploded into a shower of glitter. Brass fanfare erupted from a saxophonist and a trumpeter, who were trading riffs in an improvisational battle. And in the opposite corner to her, Quinn saw the barefoot man in frayed black jeans that looked down into her before.

He was leaning against a column, slightly twisted and at a strange angle, like he was scratching his back against it and had suddenly stopped to stare down at the people in the casino. When people passed by him they nodded habitually, and kept a respectful distance. No one talked to him, and he talked to no one. Quinn felt her heart beat a little stronger, and she looked down and felt herself blush, then was angry at herself for blushing. But he seemed alone, and Quinn wondered why no one talked with him. Maybe it was fear, because she felt a little of that, or maybe, maybe Quinn just didn't know and possibly never would. But she wanted to. She forced herself to walk over to him, though forced isn't so much the word. More like she just stopped thinking about consequences and went ahead and went.

She did her best to dodge a unicycler and slipped as graciously as she could through the crowd of masked faces, candle light bouncing off sequins and polished metal fixtures. She came up beside the barefoot man and opened her mouth to speak, but she had no words to come out, so she closed it again. She opened her mouth again thinking that she would go ahead and say something, but since she still didn't have any words, she closed it again. Feeling her ears grow hot and uncomfortable, she stepped up to the window and looked down where the barefoot man was looking. The casino was still crowded, though it was close to very late, Quinn wasn't exactly sure what time it was. She watched the people flow through roulette tables and blackjack tables, watched the lights of the slot machines and the crowd that seemed to stay still and move all at the same time. The man had made no movement to show he knew of her presence, but when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, she saw he was looking right at her, again.

The hotness ran from her ears down into her cheeks and she looked away quickly, regretting it and wishing she were more suave than this. So she went ahead and looked back, hoping nothing too terrible would happen. They locked eyes then, the man's face stone, Quinn's lips moving slightly as if trying to catch onto a word, but before any came the man looked away and out into the crowed of the Masquerade troupe. She watched his gray eyes slowly scan each face in the room, looking for some explanation, maybe, why and how this girl had come to him, and when he circled back onto her, he locked eyes a minute more, before gazing back onto the casino floor.

The barefoot man considered, for a moment, general ideas about casinos and the people that came to them and the general nature of Las Vegas itself, though Quinn had no way of knowing this, and decided then to hold out his glass to her in some unfathomable gesture of either temptation or compassion.

Quinn, surprised but pushing past shyness took the glass in both hands. “Only a taste.” he said, in a raspy, purring voice, and let go. Quinn looked down into the glass at the dark, rose colored wine. Its color was dark but it had a clearness to it too. She put the glass to her lips and sipped, the flavor of strawberries mixed with a faint metallic taste, as if she had bit the the inside of her cheek, washed into her tongue, with a mellow sweetness in aftertaste and the slight breath of alcohol. She moved to take a larger sip, to drink it even, but the man took back the glass, saying again “Only a taste.”

Quinn is juggling at the airport. She feels the phone in her pocket vibrate again, but ignores it. Boarding is announced and Quinn tucks the clubs into her bag, moves into the line. She takes the phone out and glances at the missed calls and messages from her parents before turning it off. She walks down the jet way, not thinking of consequences but just going, and she daydreams about a whole bottle of strawberry wine.

Colmanara Wildcat; Blood Ruby:

Colmanara Wildcat ‘Blood Ruby’

Joey came shimmering up to me, change cup shaking and his green sweat suit covered in white paint. The light went green and cars started zipping by him, faster and faster till all you could think about was the thumping of air on both sides of you and how bad you need to stay still. Whenever they start going real fast like that, I just lean back against the stack of newspapers I'll never sell and make myself narrow. Some truck came through the curve too tight and Joey came this close to getting his elbow clipped by its side view mirror.

"Jesus, Joey. Car almost clipped you."
He shrugged in a kind of jerking motion. "Hey Roe," he says, "how you making out?"
"You ask me this every damn Sunday."
"Come on, Roe. Ain't getting nothing out here man."
"Why don't you sell papers, then?"
"Can't do that, man." he said and hitched up his sagging sleeves.
“Why not? You out here every day with your cup anyways."
"Come on man, just a little?"

I reached down into my apron and pulled out pretty much everything I made this morning, held it out to him. I could see the little dots of scab just below his rolled up sleeve, all on one big bruise with these big veins running all up his scrawny arm. I knew where the money went but where he got it I've no idea, nowhere town like this. Didn't much care, either; not my job to save him.
He took the cash without looking at it, watching traffic with glassy eyes till the light went red. He staggered across the road, shaking like he was cold or something. I picked up a paper, holding it up towards car windows, and limped up the concrete barrier. I like to stare in through the windows, squinting hard sometimes so they can tell I'm looking at them, then hold up the paper like I'm about to backhand a dog. Scares some of them into buying one; most just keep the windows up tight and stare dead ahead.

The hours can get real long, specially on a Sunday morning when people are just trying to get somewhere. I try to kill time by counting how many red cars pass by, but after ten minutes I loose track and started to flip through the classifieds. The ad for selling papers was in there. It said EXCITING OPPORTUNITES in bold letters. Sounded good, first time I saw it, couple of months after I got on disability. Turned out to be a crock. Had to buy the newspapers with my own money and they only sold them in stacks of five hundred and they made you buy a couple.

Even on a good day, there’s no way to get rid of them all. I wound up bringing them all back with me. Spent the rest of the week playing with them. Bought a book on origami, made some cranes and stuff; a lot of boats. Then I invested in some flour and tissue paper and started doing piñatas. Got pretty good at it too. Before long I had them hanging up all over the house. Most of them were just egg shaped colored things, but I had a few donkeys and stars and whatever other animals once I got the hang of it. Used to drive Susie nuts.


“Steve,” she used to say. “What the hell you doing with these piñatas?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like them.”
“I don’t care how much you like them. There’s plenty of things I like to do, but I don’t get paid for them.”
“Oh, come on. Thought we talked about this all ready.”
“I know we have. But it never does any good, does it?”
“Well, I guess I could start taking these over to the flea market. Probably sell these for, like, five dollars a piece or something.”
“I can’t believe you just said something that stupid.”
I wiped my hands, trying to get all the flour paste and bits of newspaper off and stood up. “Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Go get a job!”
“What am I supposed to do?” I said, holding up my broken hand. “How am I supposed to work like this?”
“I don’t know. Go look.”
“We’re not even that bad off. I’ve got the disability coming in for another five years, at least.”
“That barely pays the mortgage. And what the hell am I supposed to do after five years?”
“Well, why don’t you go get a job. You live here too.”
“What about kids, Steve? You know how much time it takes to look after kids?”
“We don’t even have kids!”
“What happens when we do, then? Loose all our income when we need it most?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You need to get up off your ass and get a job! I’m tired of this.” She smacked a piñata out of her way and left the room. It swung there for a bit before the push pin came out of the ceiling and it bounced to the floor.
“Why does all this have to be on me?” I yelled after her.

The after-church and lunch-time traffic starts to dwindle and I cut out, leaving the stack of unsold papers for the afternoon guy to deal with. Took me some time to get up the hill to the parking lot, knee was hurting pretty bad, and just past my pickup I could see Joey stripped to his brown colored briefs hosing himself down behind some barbeque joint. Must have been a hell of a thing to see pulling up to the drive-through. By the time I had pulled myself up into the seat, some kid had come out of the joint holding two trash bags. He started yelling at Joey but he just stood there, naked, holding the hose upright so water was flowing thick into the air, like it was clotting or something.

I like to leave the blood ruby sitting right in the middle of my dining room table. I took the chandelier down and hung up a UV light with a polarized filter, hanging by these thin chains so I can raise it up whenever I need to. Sometimes, the orchid grows tall, in years like this. It was about time for it to bloom, I could tell; the buds were real heavy, pregnant, so I kept it tied up on a stake so it wouldn't collapse under its own weight and rot into the dirt. I checked the osmunda fiber to see how wet it was, drained the excess water, retied the stake where the stem had slipped some. I like to use bits of shoelace, since they're bigger and don't bite down into it. I clipped off some of the smaller buds and browning leaves so the plant could concentrate its energy on the rest.

I went and got a can of beer and sat at the dining room table. The fingers on my left hand went to itching again. Doctors called that Phantom Pains, though it’s not so much a pain as it is a real deep kind of itching that runs all the way up from my wrist into the tips of my pinky, ring, and middle fingers. Except, course, the tips aren’t there anymore. Gets so bad sometimes I feel like gnawing on it like a dog. Only thing I can do is get my mind off it.

It was better when Susie was here. My hand would start itching and I’d put up a real fuss about it, just to get her to hold my wrist and rub my palm and the roots of my fingers. She was taking massage therapy classes at a community college, and she got real good at it. Figured it was worth the extra money we had to put up for tuition. She’d practice on me weekday mornings. The two of us laying around in bed. Susie would take my busted hand into hers and start kneading it and watch her stories on the television. I followed along sometimes, but mostly I laid back and drifted in and out of sleep. Most peaceful I’ve ever felt.

I once saw this show where some guy was talking about eastern religions and they got to a bit on Buddhist monks. They showed all this stuff they did: make designs with sand, the rock gardens they raked in circles, sitting around humming to themselves. I’m not sure why they kept calling it a religion, because it’s not really. There’s no gods or daemons or anything magical about it; it’s more like an idea they all have, Zen. The guy was trying to explain how it’s all about this state of mind, where you intently focus on an unimportant task so all the rest of your mind can be at peace. The goal, he said, is to reach a point where you’re not thinking at all.

That’s kind of what it’s like when I get to sitting and watching the blood ruby. Pop open a beer and just sit there and stare at the thing, watching it. Not exactly watching it, like it’s about to change or something, but I just kind of sit there and look at it till my eyes start to go funny and the walls and table and everything in view go a uniform shade of light gray or sometimes a kind of grayish-purple, depending on the time of day. Everything except the plant, which always seems to stay in focus, specially when it’s blooming. Then I just let my mind wander around wherever it wants to.

Gets kind of dark, sometimes, things I think about. Like, right now, I’m wondering what it’d be like to go over and pick up one of my steak knives and start sawing at these damn stubs. I bet it’d feel good, because I might finally be able to get at this damn itch. Could also just work at it till they come off right at the hand, kind of like a hair cut, because the way it is now, they look off kilter, cut off right at the middle joints. Course, there’d be a lot of blood, but I could just let it drain out into the orchid. I keep the roots pretty dry, so it’d be able to take it. Then, when it bloomed, the flowers would be all rich and glossy and just beautiful. That’d be something to see.

Not that I’d ever hurt myself; it’s just where my mind likes to go, sometimes. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned for sure is that metal ripping through flesh, well, it ain’t fun. I was only a couple years out of high school when I found that out. Had a job with a contractor that refurbished hardwood floors. I was down on one knee with a hand sander getting the old finish off the floor when the blade off the table saw came loose and flew through the air like a crazy frisbee. Went right through these three fingers and into the knee I was resting my hand on. There was this nice little half a second where everything going on in my head just stopped and there was Zen. Course then everything came right back real quick. There’s this instant where I could tell logically what had happened, before the pain kicked in, but I just couldn’t really believe it. I knew there was lots of sticky blood soaking into my jeans, and I could look down and see these three little curly cues that used to be fingers laying on my shoe, and I could tell there was a saw blade stuck in my knee, but none of it really registered.

Thing about a table saw blade is that it doesn’t do such a good job slicing as much as it just tears through stuff. Even if the doctors sewed my fingers back on, there wasn’t much of a chance they’d be any kind of useful. They did what they could with my knee, but, well, there’s only so much they can do. Once the pain killers kicked in, I started think it wasn’t so bad. Get a pretty decent disability check every month, now. Not such a bad deal, ask me.

I went to get another beer from the fridge, but I guess I drank them all. That was sooner than I expected. I went to take a piss instead. The sound of the toilet flushing echoed all through the house and I stood in the hallway listening to the water flow back into the tank. It’s a good idea to get out every now and again, so I got in my pickup and drove over to El Rodeo. It’s a small place, and the quesadillas aren’t bad. The bar specializes in margaritas and Mexican beers. I mean, you can get something else, but they’ll look at you funny.

The bar girl snapped the cap off a bottle and put it down in front of me without looking. She turned back and started making one of the real big ‘ritas. I had found how big they could get one night when I ordered one from one of the waiters; I guess I emphasized grande too much and he came back with a glass I had to hold with the palms of both my hands. Susie laughed when the ice sloshed forward and got my shirt front soaked. She stuck her water straw in and helped out. We spent the rest of the night talking bout nothing in particular. Last time I can remember seeing her smile.

The bar girl knocked the can of salt with her elbow when she handed it to a waiter. I always wondered where you got big salt like they used. I wondered if they made it out of the little salt, or if the little salt came from the big stuff. The bar girl squatted down to pick up the can, poured a little into her hand, and threw it over her shoulder. She was wearing this neon-pink shirt that anybody could see straight down into. Susie had a shirt like that, only it was a few shades darker and she used to keep a few more buttons together.

Then Joey wandered in. Never seen him here before, don’t know if he followed me or if he just happened to come by. He didn’t get ten feet before one of the waiters started yelling at him to get the hell out. Joey yelled back in some kind of junkie language that didn’t make any sense. The Mexican started getting louder and slipped into Spanish. Seemed like some kind of secret code cause then seemed like everyone who worked there came over and tried to get him to leave. Even the bar girl started shouting across the dining room, waving her arms around and probably cursing. Joey was up to the challenge though, matched them word for word, in whatever language he was trying to speak.

I didn’t want to remember, but all the yelling made me think about the last time I saw Susie. It had been almost a whole year since I went on disability and I still hadn’t found a job. Never really tried, but I wish to God I had. She’d still be here if I had. But the tuition fees had started to pile up, amount other things, and I guess Susie just didn’t want to deal with me anymore. We got into a real big fight, I lost my cool, and Susie left for class two hours early.

I got in my truck to go for a drive, wound up in town. Talked to the manager at a hardware store chain who said once there was an opening I’d definitely get a call. Pay was okay, and I could probably work up the salary before the disability ran out.

I stopped by a flower shop on the way back. I was going to get some roses or something for Susie and tell her things would be fine. There was a woman in back playing with these potted plants. Looked like vines with all these little red things on it.

“What are those?” I asked.
“Orchids,” she said. “Colmanara wildcat blood ruby.”
“Long name for a flower.”
She smiled mostly to herself. “There’s a lot of orchids. The name denotes the family and name of each particular plant.”
I frowned and nodded. They flowers were real pretty, this deep kind of red color that was exactly like blood. They looked like little starfish with big, floppy tongues. “They for sale?”

When I got home, I could tell immediately that Susie wasn’t there. Houses are funny like that. I cleared a space on the dining room table and left it there, with the lights on, to surprise her. Only she didn’t come back that night. Or the night after. Or the week after, till I got the idea that she wasn’t coming back at all.

Joey and the Mexicans were still going at it by the time I decided to leave. The drive back wasn’t too bad. I was sweating a little from the beers, but it wasn’t far back to the house. I got home and the sun was starting to come down in the early evening. The light came in through the windows and all over the blood ruby. I sat down with my back to the windows and stayed there till the sky went from orange to dark blue to black.

Then all I was left with was the thin, polarized light from the UV lamp. One of the orchid buds was on the verge of blooming; I could see the deep red of the blossom squeezing out. I got up and held the bud gently between my left index finger and thumb, fingering the tiny opening. With my other hand I picked up the pruning shears and moved to cut the bud away. I guess I didn’t feel like seeing red, but I stopped.

In my mind I could see me cutting it off. I thought about crushing the bud slowly between my thumb and finger, working chloroform and red dye into my finger tips. The petals would break apart and squeeze out gel like. From the place where it was cut I could see a small droplet of blood pool up like pine sap and stream slowly down the stalk. Then my fingers got to itching and I clipped it anyways.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

is there a way to delete this thread?

How ya doing, buddy?

I don't know, is there a good reason for it?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

cause it was just going to sink to the bottom and i might as well get rid of it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I hate it when I have a great idea, but then the story just doesn't do it justice. Writing can be so great...and so frustrating!!

I was speaking idiomatically.