The pair hat been sitting somewhat motionless., somewhat austere. It may have been that the windows, ordinarily blacked out, had suffered both internal and external trauma during the storm. Now a fragmentary light filtered in, not lazily, but not precisely judging either.
The girl was somewhat still except for one finger striking the table like an agitated piano player. The man too moved, also only a finger, but his in a circle, the same circle, clockwise then counter clockwise, on her thigh.
“Shit happens, sometimes.”
“In storms.” She didn't add 'apparently' and perhaps it was unnecessary. His statement had been generalized commentary on the far side of the room with the upturned tables, the thirteen broken spikes of high heels sticking up from the one table rightly standing. The stage stretched between them and the wreckage, inserting a silence. His gloss, then, was intended in the excellent style of all glosses, as a blurring of that which they studied, but didn't see. But she had brought it back to hours and circumstance and un-abstracted smells.
The shit had come just when the wind howled less, after Candy had climbed monkey-like, wiry limbs scaling framed pictures of past beauties, to the window where she lost a nail but succeeded in peeling back the black paint. There had been a shrieking round of giggles, and Candy's head turned back, nearly three-quarters, grinning at her audience, when the glass shattered and the pile knocked her cold.
“Pig shit,” said one patron holed up to last out the hurricane, and while he was hardly more farmer than the rest of them, no one argued.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
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i have only one thing to say at this point. and i can say this b/c i'm your mom. please reread your stuff before you put it up. i spent an inordinate amount of time timing to figure out what a "pair hat" was. okay, call me thick. but i kept thinking it was something very interesting--a hat made of pairs, maybe. but pairs of what? or had you misspelled "pears?' but then you say it was sitting motionless. and thank god for that. because if it started to move then i was reading a horror story. once i realized it was a typo, i enjoyed it so far. i'm intrigued to see where you're going and that you're writing about charleston (or something that seems charlestonish).
ReplyDeleteliked the scatological nature of this. interesting how many times you implied the word 'shit' without saying it. really liked all the tapping going on. very tense feeling. i think i got the scene and the locale but i may have been filling in my own interpretation.
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