Pumpkin

I'm trying to imagine the life of this can of pumpkin while I twist the handle on the can opener. I watch the words “Best by: Apr 2005” spin counterclockwise on the lid to the can opener's munching. I'm not sure I can even guess when this pumpkin must have been canned to have passed its best-by date six years ago. I picture the pumpkin as a waxy young gourd, growing up in an era where canning is kind of a new thing to the world of food - off-white and eggshell are the in-vogue kitchen colors. I try to imagine the shock and confusion, the soft hiss of decompression, the light beginning to spill in, Beck playing Hot Wax very loudly in the background to welcome it back to the world. How different the bright blues and pastel red, gold, and greens of my kitchen must look to the pumpkin. I do not envy it. Soon it’ll be muffins, so it goes.

The muffins turn out dry, stillborn from the oven. I have a bowl of Cheerios while I wait for them to cool and then wrap them in cheery green cellophane without removing them from the muffin tin. It’s 7 pm and I wonder what the mailbox is up to. I emerge from my house with about the same viscosity as the pumpkin from the can, punctuating each of my actions with wider, more dramatic swinging motions than necessary. Giving the mundane activities in my day this kind of energy lends them an element of grandiosity that they otherwise might lack.

Bacon Bits

1. Whenever I looked into those flat, despondent eyes of his, the way they always focused on something about ten feet behind me and never quite managing to look like attention had been gained from them, I got that sort of enthusiastic frustration - the kind that makes you force people to fly kites and go on picnics or camping trips, and incidentally, seemed to be exactly the part of him that he’d lost somewhere in the last thirty years of his cubicled life.

2. Brian felt like his relationship with Cynthia was going pretty well, and in fact, if you had asked him, he would have told you so with a smile on his face and not even a twinge of doubt, that is, right up until the moment she hit him in the face with the shovel.

3. It was the first time that she’d ever seen anyone who actually kept gloves in the glove compartment, and this made her keenly suspicious of him.

4. “Well why couldn’t she just take your car?” was just what Jim was expecting her to say, and he had already prepared an exhaustive list of reasons why that was precisely the worst idea she had ever had, so it very disappointing when it didn’t come up.

5. Ellen was just innocently minding her coffee at the bar when Dan asked her one of those questions that you only expect to get when you’re sitting down or not holding anything dangerous, which is why he was in the bathroom wringing $2.75 of decaf house blend out of his shirt and she was trying to see if she could get a free refill out of the waitress.

6. Like most white people, Doug thought that Jesus was a white guy, which is why it took him almost ten minutes to recognize what he was looking at on his waffle, and an additional two minutes to realize that his whole life was about to change.

7. Ashley had a chronic problem of feeling like her life was low budget indie film, and she felt this most acutely whenever she got on the bus and put on her headphones, because no matter what was playing on her discman, it was the perfect song to accompany shots of her with her forehead pressed disconsolately against the window.

Purple Pen

It was just a cheap, plastic pen. It had a click top, and it was an ugly, pastel shade of purple. But it was from my philosophy teacher, and it said so on the side of it. And the first time that I tried to use it, it didn’t write. Lots of pens in the world don’t write – it is, after all, not a perfect world – but something about the glossy word “Philosophy” printed in bold, uniform letters there just above my hand joined areas of my mind that had not previously met. A pen that doesn’t write.

Even still, even all these years later, I reel at the delicate yet powerful significance of this. Sometimes, when I’m feeling my age, I sense that that pen and I have more in common than I am prepared to admit.

The Buliny Lite: Character Exploration

Spud’s helmet had a visor, of course, but he didn’t flip it down. Sometimes, he just liked to feel the sunlight on his face. It was so warm and comforting in a way that no other warmth in the universe can be. It pressed against his jaw, across his forehead, through his eyelids. He felt permeated by it, and basked in the feeling, letting himself float free of the ground beneath him, enjoying drifting away for a moment. The tether would keep him stuck to the rock as it trundled around the dusty planet above him. The two twisted hulks near him were surrounded by clouds of metal fragments that danced, and twirled, and occasionally collided. They glittered mesmerizingly, blending with the back screen of twinkling stars. There wasn’t much to the life of a salvager, so he took these brief moments of vast emotional complexity and was grateful for them. He knew there was probably a lot to life that he wouldn’t ever understand, but right now, dangling off the ass of this hunk of rock and soaking the slow, prickly love from the sun into his smiling face, he felt content to be small.

 

Nikolad Videlsky didn’t think much of his job, and, in fact, tried not to think of it at all when he didn’t have to. It was hard, with long hours, and no future. After graduating from a decent piloting school in Lonetrek with respectable marks, he expected to go straight into the Cadarus Navy. He wanted badly to be captain of grand battleships and destroyers. But competition was fierce, and expenses were great. Soon, a temporary job as a courier morphed into a full time job as a transporter, and now here he was behind the helm of a paunchy freighter instead of a sleek warship. All he could do is stare out the tiny windows at the tangled sea of metal plates and piping in front of him. Although his chance at a better life had escaped him long ago, at least the pay was beginning to match his effort.

 

A T-78 Charon freighter was not your standard mark for a crew of twenty-some. And while the idea seemed like an idiotic one at first, the tiny man’s insistence was beginning to sink into her, like an unwilling sleep. Varsha wasn’t the kind of privateer that especially needed to take risks, and she didn’t feel particularly impassioned by anything at all. It was something in his beady little eyes, she thought, that kept trying to kindle a fire within her and make her believe in his cause. Little by little, she warmed, and she knew that night, as they sat at a sticky booth in an inconspicuous little mining colony cafeteria at the edge of the Todaki system with star charts rolled out all over the table, that all his flailing and vehemence was going to win her over. She would do this thing, as unreasonably stupid as it was, although she was still shrewd enough that she wasn’t going to make it cheap.

 

Little Things (Deleted Scene)

On a whim, I stop by a sporting goods store on the way home.           

 

Before I go inside, I flip down the sun visor and glance in the mirror. My hair is looking a little crazy, but after a minute of trying to press it into submission, I give up. My inspiration was this: just about every sport has got something that you could kill someone with. Golf has got clubs, hockey has got sticks, cricket has got those big paddles, tennis – rackets, croquet – mallets, football is tricky, but I think that if you were dedicated, you could do a lot of damage with a helmet. For him, I was thinking baseball. After that big fight we had over his stupid baseball card collection, and he lost all that money betting on the Yankees that one time, and how he never does anything when there’s a game on, I think it’s the obvious choice. My face starts twitching just thinking about him sitting there on the couch in that idiotic jersey, beer in hand, shouting at the TV while I’m in the kitchen chopping ferociously at the vegetables for the meal that he plans on enjoying when his precious game is over.

I try to put that all away for now. There are a lot of bats to choose from. I grab the biggest one I see and inspect it. It’s surprisingly light, but I guess they all are these days. The body of it goes from gold to silver and has the word “Torque” painted on it in big, red letters. I close my eyes and savor its cold, aluminum surface, the supple rubber grip, and pour my hate into the thing. The adrenaline is making me feel heady, and while I’m making my way to the counter, my brain feels like it’s ballooning outside of itself.

“Is that all for you ma’am?”

“Yes.” I fumble around in my purse for a credit card.

“Just a bat?”

“It’s for my son. He’s starting practice.”

“You sure it’s the right size? This is a big ol’ bat for-”

“He’s a big fucking kid, just charge the damn card, would you, please?!”

“Jeez, alright lady, calm down.” He’s got greasy hair that curls down just above beady brown eyes, and I don’t like the look they give me when he slides the card back to me.

I put my purchase on the floor of the passenger seat and head home.

Little Things

When I wake up, it’s raining outside and his side of the bed is getting cold. I’m chasing the coattails of an interesting dream, but it has already fled to the parts of me that are still murky with sleep, lurking just outside the reach of my searching mind. I give up and roll over onto my back, kicking fitfully at the big, stripy comforter and basking in the cool morning air for a moment while I look at the ceiling. There are a lot of squiggles in the ceiling tiles, and I meditate briefly, and not for the first time, on how in the world ceiling tiles must be made. As I slide out of bed and shrug on some warm clothes, I glance over at the half-closed door to the bathroom. Steam is curling out the top of shower, and the way he rustles the curtains with his scrubbing make the brightly colored fish that cover them look alive. He’s singing some song by the Beatles really terribly. Something about it all makes me smile for no reason. The feeling of the mangy carpet under my feet gives me a sense of solidarity and I enjoy curling it between my toes for a minute. I find my contacts and put them in, then go look for some breakfast.

            I think about yelling, “Good morning,” to him before leaving the bedroom, but decide that I’d rather be serenaded while I’m eating. A heap of clean clothes waits patiently in front of the door for someone to fold it, and I have to kick at it until it will let me through. As I close the door behind me, something across the apartment in the kitchen catches my eye, and for a moment, everything seems to hang suspended in time while his muffled song leaks through the drywall. I blink at what I’m seeing, hoping it will go away.

How many times have I told him? A bowl sits on the counter; a pool of tepid milk lies in the bottom of it. My hands start shaking and I can feel my cheeks flushing. Oh no. I can see that the cabinet is left open, and I’m terrified of what I’ll find as I circle slowly around our furniture and into the kitchen. My heart is racing, and my eyes pound in time at the top of my skull. Oh no no no. There it is…there is the last straw. Things had been going well these past few weeks, and now this! I tug desperately at the drawer that’s got my pills in it. So much progress lost. I manage to wrestle the top off the bottle, but I’m trembling too violently by now, and only manage to smash one of the little capsules into my chin while the rest of them glance off my elbow and spill into the sink. Shit! The shower stops running. I panic and my vision begins to tunnel, so I yank my cell phone off the charger, scrabble to get everything into my purse and take off before I have to face him while I’m in a state.

I fumble with the keys to our Impala, and barely manage to get out of the parking garage while tears threaten to blind me. Why would he do it again? What the hell was he even thinking?! I try to push it from my mind and concentrate on getting to work in one piece. Between the frantic strokes of my wiper blades I see a line of bicyclists braving the morning drizzle. There are so many fucking bicyclists in this part of the city. Why do they have to drive on the road, for God’s sake? What’s wrong with the goddamn sidewalk? Why did we move to this stupid, yuppie neighborhood in the first place?! I just want to run them over. I want to careen wildly, picking them off one by one, their water bottles flying over my hood and their astonished expressions imprinting themselves on my windshield. Now I realize I’m screaming and that my throat is starting to hurt. Maybe I should pull over. No, I can make it - I’m almost to work now. It’s still early and there are plenty of spaces open still. I swerve into the first spot I see, running the Impala up onto the curb. It sends the adorable little clay angel that dangles from the rearview mirror into a ballistic little dance like a fly tethered to a thumbtack.

The day agonizes by, and I can’t shake the desperate rage from my head. I feel delirious with contempt. In two hours, I’ve snapped all my pencils into the smallest bits I can get them, and I’ve taken ten trips to the water fountain. In seven hours, I’ve accomplished nothing and am reduced to gripping tightly to my desk. I decide to head home early for the day. There’s nothing to be done but face this problem head on. On a whim, I stop by a sporting goods store on the way.

As I reach the door of our apartment, I can feel my hands pulsing with fury and anticipation. Sweat beads out of my forehead and my skin itches like it’s on fire. I cling to the doorknob until my knuckles turn white and can feel all the scratches and places where the gold paint has chipped off on its worn and faded surface burning into my palm.  When I find him, he’s watching cartoons on the sofa. His hands occupy themselves, pulling loose threads and tufts of foam from the armrest. He looks up at me with a bemused expression, like a cow startled from grazing. When I raise the shiny new baseball bat over my head, he cocks his head to the side and scrunches up his eyebrows.

“Whu-?” he starts.

“FOR THE LAST TIME,” I shriek, punctuating each of my words with a ferocious swing at his skull, “DON’T. EAT. MY. FUCKING. GRAPENUTS.”

July

Her shelves were littered with ugly little porcelain cats. Their glossy eyes leer at me with dusty imperiousness through the stale air, which churns slow and thick to the feeble efforts of a limping ceiling fan. Its warped and peeling blades whine softly, and I swear it makes it seem like one of the lacquered cats is mewling at me. I swim through the air to the couch and leaf through some of the faded magazines that lay heaped like autumn leaves in a basket under the coffee table. Their pages are curled outwards, sticky with humidity, and each time I flip one over to scan the dour, sepia faces of a bygone era, a draft of well seasoned air – the kind that can only develop in-between pages of text over very long periods of time – leaves me feeling a bit heady.