Hey There. It's Been A While. I Remember When We Were 18, And It's Funny To Think That I've Gotten Older

Hey there. It's been a while. I remember when we were 18, and it's funny to think that I've gotten older but you haven't. It'll be even funnier when I'm 50, and I think back to us traipsing through the Venus flycatcher fields of Tomahawk, Wis., burning newspapers in the woods on Halloween, eating candy in the tub and smoking out of apples, and you still wouldn't have changed. You and I will always be 18 together. That part of me that's stuck to you will never grow a day older. 

Aaron can't come to terms with the fact that the world still turns. I can't comprehend it either. For once, I have no idea, no theories and nothing at all to say about that.

I owe you. We'll see if I ever find a way to pay you back.

Top-notch people.

Excerpt

Archetypal city scene-setting, based largely on this Hyde Park/Shanghai hybrid of my imagination. 

***

Bensonhurst was an analogous neighborhood as ever there was one. Along the route they walked each day, Roman recognized the residences of politicians and movie stars, gangbangers, university students and corporate warlords all situated within sugar-borrowing distance of each other. Where one red, white and green-clad street ended, another overlaid with idiographic signs declaring dim sum availability began. And while homeless peddlers of progressive rags lay sleeping in the alleys behind five-star restaurants, gated communities stood downwind of El Burrito Palace. Down in Bensonhurst, the squirrels and the pigeons had more meat on their bones than the people.

Roman inhaled the carcinogenic air of his home, exhaled noxious particles of himself. He recalled when he was younger, he would feel his way about Brooklyn in the dark, roaming the streets on Saturday nights binge-drinking, pot-smoking, painting ideological murals on the sides of cargo cars until the early hours of Kubla Khan. Consequently, he would spend most Sundays in bed with the curtains nailed shut, moaning and groaning to the ravages of pickaxe psychedelic organists on his nerves.      

But then once he had grown up, had rebuilt his damaged synapses and experienced sufficient heartbreak, Roman woke before dawn most days and started recognizing the city for what it really was without cover of the euphemistic dark.

It was then he started to take notice of the layers upon layers of dust clinging to the sides of iconic skyscrapers, waterlogged American flags heavily hanging on their posts. He started seeing construction scaffolds on every corner, industrial backwash running in the gutters, factory emissions bleeding a graded wash into the empty expanses of the sky where webs of telephone wires, public transport cables, street lights and neon signs coiled like a great wire cage. He liked the idea of it all being a cage—the premise thus implied that people could fly if they wanted to. 

Excerpt

A passage about distraction from "Samsara," a short story of about 5,000 words written for class. 

***

Since her daughter entered college, she had a lot of time on her hands. What had originally been a text message a day turned into a word only every once in a while turned into nothing at all. And nothing was the worst. In many ways, no word, no trace was worse than the worst thing that could ever happen to a young woman living on her own for the first time.

There were tall hedges by the side of the house. These Lois cultivated religiously. She cut them down to size in great spiraling designs, with lampshade silhouettes, pear form. During that period when the police called every day to inform her about the ongoing missing person’s investigation carried out in her daughter’s name, Lois got creative with the yard work. She stood out on the lawn and routinely sculpted them—really just trying to maintain her domestic sphere—until the day her husband called out from the porch that if Lois didn’t leave the hedges alone, there would be nothing left.

Lois’s husband had a good job. A good job was a stable one, and a white-collared, briefcase-carrying, financial analysis managerial position with an investment firm on the Street was stable. It was constant right down to the late hours he worked on the odd days of the week, the sultry Dior he carried home on his sleeve to a wife feigning sleep in the dark.

On the weekends, Lois’s husband stayed home. With his jackhammer and chisel, he took it upon himself to break up all the cement surrounding the den, dig several feet into the foundation of the house, and reroute the water lines. After that, he patched everything up with fresh concrete mix. Then he needed to throw out the fireplace. Replace the carpet with hardwood. Repaint the walls.

Lois didn’t read the news, only cut vegetables for the slow cooker beside the kitchen phone. Down by Stony Brook, students made ribbons and buttons and put up fliers. Pressured for real information to release to the public, the press ran stories about the candlelit vigils, the classmate testimonials, and SUNY’s history of violence.

Excerpt

...from a short story of 5,000 words called "The Severe Love of Sisters."

***

When wayfaring Viktor Pasternak drove into the sleepy town of Burr Ridge, traversing the shadowy foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the hell spawn-infested interstate to ask for Katherine Spencer’s hand, she instantly knew he was meant for her.

Or at least, that was one of many fantasies Anya and Katia had regarding the happy circumstances of their birth. Piecing together evidence from a handful of photographs and the lingering scent of lilacs pressed in the pockets of old dresses, the girls reinvented to their liking a history their widowed father preferred not to revisit.

In reality, all anyone knew for sure was that in Katherine Spencer’s many years of living and working in Burr Ridge, the shotgun-wielding auburn beauty had proven unquestionably capable of running a ranch alone. Yet when Viktor hitchhiked into town and persuaded her to hire him the winter of 1980, no one expected he would also convince her to marry him by spring. Small town gossip had it that Viktor poisoned Katherine within three years of their hasty wedding in order to inherit the ranch, but Anya and Katia knew they themselves were proof of their parents’ genuine love.

Gossip was one reason why invitations to barbeques and birthday parties always got lost en route to the Pasternaks’ mailbox. Viktor’s outlandish upper arm tattoos — which he said were a reminder of his Russian Orthodox faith — was another, and the remoteness of their ranch was a third. In any case, fantasy was an inexpendable occupation in the sisters’ early years. When they had only each other, theirs was always an equitable utopia, an impartial fairy tale in which Prince Charmings came in identical pairs and there was never a single fairest of them all. 

NSTF Prompt

Every week at No Stranger To Fiction, we finish our meetings with a short prompt. This week, our president picked a random paperback romance from the shelves at Barnes and Noble (where we meet) and requested the story behind the title. 

The book was "Undeniably Yours" by Shannon Stacey, and this is what I came up with in five minutes. 

***

“Undeniably Yours,” was what she signed most of the letters with, followed by his name, Covington, printed in small letters spaced very far apart from each other. That had been his style in the past when he still wrote to Mrs. Covington personally. For years, he had been unaware of how she liked to add that small flair, had been completely oblivious to the way she started the letters with “My Darling—,” that she interlaced his unfailingly somber dictation with the occasional slip of sincerity and always, always sealed the envelopes with a kiss.  

***

In my head, it's an Edwardian lesbian romance in which a man discovers his secretary and his wife have been staging an illicit love affair through him.