Nevermind, gave up.

[Abra]

(I STOLE DEM PITCHERS FROM THA INERGOOGLE)

I hadn't come up with a plan when I first started writing, but I've decided that my novel is sort of making a balance between gender, age and (social) class. The two main characters (male and female) both inadvertently step into each others gender norms, sort of 'tipping the scale' and making them gender neutral... in some... analytical way. As for age, though the guy is a lot older, throughout the novel his mind's age diminishes while the (younger) girl grows up a bit. Finally, Mr. Upper-middle class gets equalized by who he thought was a high-rolling CEO. DAYUMN.

Yeahhhhh.


The main plot idea is that... a woman by the name of Roxanne finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. Her husband is on a tour of Europe with his theater group and decides to catch him off guard in England to share the good news in person. Unfortunately she got a little lost on the way to the theater and ran into Johnson Hours, novelist and single father out on a Sunday afternoon to escape the clutches of his nagging girlfriend Hara. Missing the play, Roxanne is invited out to dinner as a Thank You for finding Johnson's temporarily-lost daughter.
Roxanne's plan to find her husband sounded like a good idea until he showed no feelings for the news and directed her to 'get rid of it' at the cast party. Throughout the apartment complex, everyone is celebrating, and Roxanne gets a bit tied up after her bout with her husband. The last thing she remembered from that night was the diet cola she was offered. Waking up in her shabby hotel room with absolutely nothing but the dress she had on the night before (literally, nothing but,) Roxanne has absolutely nowhere to go... but that Johnson fellow seemed pretty nice.
Oh, but what's this on the news? A viral epidemic breaks out and people start dropping like flies after going blind? Interesting. Even though Roxanne could get a new passport, no one is allowed to leave the country? Stay tuned after these messages!



Updates:

SPOILER: Click to show

November 5: 9,580
November 6: 10,371
November 7: 10,935
November 11: 12,426
November 12: 13,169

1,000th word: "block."
10,000th word: "elegant."
12,345th word: "You"

Characters:

Johnson Hours
He's your typical, not-terribly-popular horror novelist. He used to have a bit of a wild side to him but quickly grew out of it with the arrival of his first and only child. John is currently taking a break from writing and is pondering about taking on an actual job. Moderate-height, sensible... If my novel were to become a movie he would be played by Johnny Depp, hands down. d:

Roxanne Byers
She gets a bit tangled up in the pandemonium after what was supposed to be a two-day holiday in England. Initially kind and rather soft-spoken, she can get pretty nasty pretty quickly when something of hers or something she believes in is threatened. Otherwise she's great at giving people what they want: getting what she wants, though... not so much. ...If my novel were to become a movie she would be played by Rachel McAdams. (Sorry Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was going to be you until I thought of Rachie. Sorry.)

Hara Rosenstein
Johnson's spoiled girlfriend. She's also a writer--for a fashion magazine. Hara just loves to gossip and knows absolutely everything about absolutely everyone. She can be kind of a snob and tends to be one of those people who doesn't let other people talk. When Hara enters the room, all eyes must be on her. She's a bit on the queerly thin side with very curly, very blond hair. ...If my novel were to become a movie she would be played by Kristen Bell.

Ratin-Ravi
Johnson's chauffer, groundskeeper, housekeeper, pool guy, gardener, nanny, and best friend.

Abigail Hours
Johnson's five-year-old daughter, sassy and personable as ever.

Beast
Abigail's white, long-haired Chihuahua

? Byers
Roxanne's not-all-too-thrilled husband.


Roxanne's 'new friend'.



Important names and places
Tangiere's
Maus Disease

[Abra]

I think I need help. x.o My story was originally set in London, England but after remembering that I have absolutely NO lousy' knowledge of the city, I changed it to just an anonymous English city. Still not doing so well considering a lot of the events that occur depend so much on location.
Should I just move the storyline over to the States and put it in my hometown so I actually KNOW where everything is? Which means Roxanne would have to be from like... Canada or something really cliche. Dx

[Abra]

Rescued from the second page of despair and lost novels.

[Abra]

Figured I might as well post it in case people are actually curious... :/ But from the looks of this board, probably not so much. XD

SPOILER: Click to show

On occasion, as it was one of his worst habits, Johnson Hours narrated himself, in his head. He narrated his days and his moments when there was no one around to talk or listen to. So the voice inside his head talked about what went on around him. And his inner ear listened. It’s just what he did.
Johnson was a novelist. Sometimes when he found himself narrating something that made his toes prickle he’d use it in one of his stories. But his stories rooted mainly in the horror section of most bookstores, so he didn’t exactly use his every-day life as a part of the main plotline. Even still, fantasy and science fiction might branch his stories away from the age-old, darker genre. Strangers on the street used to tell him about when they walked into the bookstore to buy his latest novel or story, they spent hours filing through all of the shelves in the horror section, only to find out the employees listed it under science fiction. John personally don’t care where they shelved anything, so long as people can find them, so they can see them clearly and think, “Hmm, this looks interesting.” Because, let’s face it, unless your name is Stephen King or you associate your characters with a broom-riding boy by the name of Harry Potter, no one’s going to recognize your work. Good books are found by chance, John philosophized, just like everything else: relationships, jobs, death… He just wanted his books to have a better chance. It’s all about what happens when. And he could care less about whose decision that was. Johnson Hours, strictly speaking, was not a religious man. One could maybe call him Agnostic because he most likely would believe in a God if someone offered solid, living and breathing proof to him. But the notion was so far from his world he never considered it.
Every Sunday morning John’s very Jewish girlfriend Hara Rosenstein assumed he was going to church. Johnson didn’t belong to a church. Johnson hasn’t been to church since he was six years old. Still, Hara wouldn’t even step foot in a Cathedral for historically educational or even entertaining purposes. “I don’t want to be rude,” she would say ridiculously, looming in front of the glazed front doors “but I just don’t believe in this.” John knew his alibi was safe for as long as he didn’t come across anyone who would later recall seeing him on the street in front of her. It wasn’t that he enjoyed lying to this beautiful, rosy-cheeked girl. John simply needed some time for himself and the only sanctity he ever wanted to relate to: Abigail Hours. So every Sunday morning, he took his five-year-old daughter out on a date and they’d play with her two-year-old Chihuahua, Beast. They brought kites and balls and cards to play with to waste the morning away at the park. Sometimes he’d give her a few notes to go ride the carousal. And although he didn’t usually ride alongside her, he still laughed and bellowed merrily with her through the entire ride.
Last August was a particularly smoldering month. It was like a season all its own: very much apart from June and July. As if someone had plucked England up right out of the ground and dropped it down into the sweltering belly of Africa. Flies and Bees licked the sweat off John’s body on the park bench as he watched Abigail play fetch with Beast. But the poor little dog didn’t have it in him to follow through with the game. More or less, Abigail played fetch with herself, throwing the stick and then running after it feverishly. Then she taunted her dog with it, showing off, letting him know that she proved to be a better retriever than he. Beast just lay there and took it with a lolling pink tongue.
He called to her, “Darling,” and she took the stick out of her teeth and looked over at her father innocently. “I’m going to go across the street and buy us a bottle of water, can you stay here and make sure Beast runs around plenty?”
“Okay Daddy,” Abigail smiled sweetly and threw the stick over her shoulder. She watched Beast roll over onto his back and concluded to fetch it for herself.
John meandered down the gravel path, running his latest plot through his head. He hated that he was reusing the same monster from one of his older stories. How many times can you write about serial killers before your readers pick up you’ve run out of ideas? Or worse, if they wonder from just where are you getting all these ideas?
Flipping through his wallet, he withdrew a few bills and handed it to the ice cream man in a single hurried motion. He exchanged them for a sweating bottle of water, cool and refreshing in his palm. Twisting off the cap he took a long sip as he turned around and scanned the park for his little princess and her pooch. Sure enough, Beast found refuge in the shade of a tree and Abigail was still playing fetch.
“Sir?” the ice cream man jingled his hand at his waist. “Sir, your change,” he offered. John apologized for his moment of absence and shoved the coins into his denim pocket.
“Sir?” it came again, but in an entirely different voice. John spun around to see a woman in a red dress standing behind the ice-cream man. “Excuse me,” she apologized to the vendor without any hint of an accent, British or not, “can you tell me how far Rose and Red is from here?” realizing his directional services were of no use to the woman, John thanked the ice-cream man again and hovered at the curb, waiting for the traffic to subside. He tried not to notice as the frozen treat proprietor gently pointed out the Red & Rose dining sign just down the block. The stream of cars ebbed, opening a small avenue for him to cross.
He checked his watch for the time, half hoping it was already noon so he could rest in the comfort of an air-conditioned room, despite his girlfriend’s nagging presence. Hara was indeed beautiful, tall and slender and always clean, but she was, and forever will be a Jewish-English-Princess.
“Do you even know which primary school you’re going to send her to?” Hara questioned him one morning over breakfast, within Abigail’s hearing range as a matter of fact. “If she misses her first year all because you weren’t organized, the other little kids will make fun.”
Abigail pretended not to hear her as she watched cartoons in the other room. But every now and then John could see her peek over her little shoulder and stare at the back of Hara’s curly, yellow head.
“I’m sending her to St. Peter’s private school, all right?” John said simply, drawing the first name he could think of. He leaned back with his square hands behind his square head before he realized just which school he had referred to and flinched. Hara squinted her eyes and licked her teeth behind locked lips. It was a challenge.
“Oh, St. Peter’s Private Lutheran School for Boys then, is it?”
“Hara,” he sighed and dropped the front legs of his chair back onto the scuffed hardwood, “I’ll find Abby a school, I’m not going to let my own daughter miss her first year!”
“Fine,” she pushed her half-eaten bagel away and threw her hands up, “I’ll let you alone.” She dropped him a false smile before nearly tripping over Beat’s tiny white body.
“Careful,” John mumbled into his coffee mug though he silently reminded himself to personally thank him after Hara went to work. It wasn’t that Hara controlled every moment of his life—despite how much it appeared so to the outside world. Hara was a born leader and put her gift to practice unnervingly often.
John had managed to squeeze that very same breakfast scenario into his latest novel. A controlling mother-in-law harassed her daughter’s widower to deal with his child’s declining school grades how she saw fit. It all occurred just before the housekeeper’s earsplitting scream. She had gone to wake the man’s son from his peaceful slumber, only to discover that he couldn’t wake up, that he would never wake up again.
Inside John killed himself a little each time he put his own child’s character or personality into a story, only to die or be terminally plagued early on in the plot. But that’s all part of what made them horror stories, to him at the very least. He always put the scariest moments he could think of into his books, whether they originated from his nightmares or day-terrors. He never accused himself of being a sick person for fantasizing about such things, and certainly no one else did: no one else knew. As a little boy John often cried himself to sleep playing out the possible scenarios of his parents’ sudden deaths. He made up how he would find out, who would tell him, where he would be, and what he would be doing at the time. He called them worst-case scenarios. The aftermath changed every time because he never liked his ideas the following night. Some nights he would be forced into a foster home, while other nights he carried on by myself at home, learning to pay the bills and continue the family antiquing business. That’s when he would stop and remind himself that his father was a lawyer and his mother stayed home and drank tea and played bridge all day. Antiquing business? Come on, John, you can do better than that.
The gravel under his dusty shoes crunched as he advanced on the empty bench in the middle of the park wall. He watched the pale yellow stones swim under his footsteps as he ran the dead-little-boy scene in his head one more time.

“Mum!” her shrieks bled through the dining room ceiling. Soon, what were usually delicate scampering footsteps thundered down the stairs in the foyer: “Mum, Suh!” her screams came again.
Adam Presley stood up at once. His chair swooned noisily behind him. His attention immediately left his late wife’s nagging mother and she cursed loudly to herself. No one was listening to her.
“Suh,” the housemaid wept, wringing her white knuckles like two washcloths, one more soaked than the other. “Suh, it’s Theodore, he ain’t wakin’ up!”
Her words shot a tremendous hole through his stomach like a cannon blast, and before he could contain himself, Adam turned away and retched on the oriental carpet.

“No, that’s disgusting,” John grimaced, climbing out of his own fantasy world. Beast barked up at him from his heels, flashing his saucer-sized ears dangerously. “Abby,” John scanned the shady area, feeling suddenly very out of place, “I have your water.”
His abrupt words, though remote and unfeeling to his own ears, were altogether empty of meaning and he soon grew to realize why.
“Abby?” John rotated like a lighthouse beam and surveyed the rest of the park from where he stood. There was not a lone child in sight. He looked down at Beast as if Abigail might have shrunk to his size and would be barking up at him in imitation. Beast yipped louder in alarm.
The world spun as he turned round and round, calling his child’s name in vain. A frigid foreboding of the worst-case scenario crept towards the back of his head, pulling his scalp taught. The water bottle dropped to the ground, kicking up a fine cloud of dust over his shoes. “Abigail!” John shouted across the green, not sure which direction to start out in first. Families, enjoying their quiet Sunday morning jeered at him from their blankets and tables.
Throwing him dirty looks they paid no heed to the tall man’s panic and resumed their—
Stop it John! Now is not the time. The man’s cheeks flushed as he tried to suppress the voice in his head—oh, that sounds sane.
--and resumed their weekly ritual of nibbling on turkey legs and mundane potato salad—
Shut up, John.
His mind collided into the encroaching walls of his skull. John couldn’t think, he could barely breathe. Find her, Johnny, a smaller, more distant voice from inside coaxed him to take a few meager shuffles forward, you can find her.
“Abigail?”
He bent over and scooped up Beast in one hand and rushed to the opposite length of the park, brushing shoulders with joggers and tourists as he shoved his way through the main entrance.
All the while, Beast scolded him, yipping and squealing authoritatively into John’s ear: You didn’t watch her, it’s your fault, you weren’t watching! She’s gone and it’s all-your-fault! John couldn’t help but to picture Hara’s reddened face on Beast’s wispy neck.
Suddenly Abigail’s mother came to mind.
John hastened his pace.

SPOILER: Click to show

The sidewalk blocks threw themselves at John’s feet and he knew he was getting nowhere fast. He was trapped in a single space, as if on a conveyer belt. He was destined to go in one direction but fought to get to the other. He needed to find his baby girl. He had to know where she was, or his head would burst from the lethal pressure of grief, guilt and rage. But his chances of finding her on his own were drastically minimal. So he was running in place, attempting to accomplish the unachievable. How could he start a search party for Abigail without letting Hara find out?
John slowed to a stop and succumbed to the inevitable. Thrusting one hand into his pants pocket, he turned on one heel and stomped to the nearest telephone booth just halfway down the block. He made sure to slam the door behind him noisily. Why should he be so afraid that his girlfriend discovered his Sunday secrets; that he managed to lose sight of his only child? John’s cheeks pulsed as he ground and clenched his teeth furiously. He strained his lips to hold back a sob he felt surfacing. What if someone had taken her? What if she was in the back of somebody’s car right now, tied up or pinned down? What could be done? What sort of person would he become, disheveled and unfeeling? The thought haunted him for a short moment until Beast’s bark thrust him back into reality.
Fervently pulling out the change from the ice-cream cart, John called the emergency line. It took a moment to shut Beast up, but he managed to pinch his jaws together with his finger and thumb.
“Your Local Police, how may I assist you?” the words ran together inaudibly, into one quick mush of sound and syllables that only reached John’s ear as garbled noise.
“My daughter is missing,” he parked Beast on top of the telephone box and grabbed the receiver with both hands, hoping to shake a quick response out of the operator. “I was in the park, in Greenwich Park, she was playing with her dog and she just disappeared,”
“Sir, what is your daughter’s name?”
“Abigail-Tanya-Hours,” he panted, emphasizing her first, middle, and last names, “she’s only five years old, with light brown hair just cut off at her chin, she has brown eyes-”
“Yes sir, and what’s your name?”
John paused a moment to gather and process her question. “Johnson Hours,” impatience riddled his tone. Beast was whimpering. He looked down from his place on top of the telephone, estimating the distance to the ground. John uncomfortably stuffed his free hand in his pocket and turned his back to the Chihuahua. The inside of the phone booth was terribly muggy and he found it hard to catch a wind of breath. Awkwardly he flipped the door open and the roar of the traffic and pedestrians passing by filled the booth.
“Mister Hours, we’re sending a unit. Stay where you are, can you do that?” Johnson had completely missed how much she sounded like himself when he spoke to Abigail. He was too busy trying to concentrate over the distracting murmur of the world outside. A fruit truck whizzed by, coughing like a chain-smoker, and a band of bicyclists whirred through the clanking gutter: all just to tinkle him off. John hesitated.
“Well, I--wait--how do you know where I am?” sticking his head out of the booth he looked up the sidewalk as if half-expecting the operator to be sitting not two blocks away. But when he tried to imagine what she might look like, a plump something on the other end of the line, a smear of red against the dull blue, beige and black dress of churchgoers clouded his mind’s eye.
It was the woman wearing the red dress who had asked the ice-cream man where Red & Rose was when he bought his bottled water. She squinted in the noon-high sun, shielding her eyes with her hand. Apart from her screwed up face in the fierce blaze of day, she looked somewhat troubled or impatient.
“Mister Hours?” John heard the operator on the phone that he held far from his ear. And his jaw numbed with anxiety and slowly fell open. “Mister Hours, are you there?” The phone slipped from his fingers as he stepped out onto the sidewalk for a clearer view.
Beside the woman, standing on the planter of an apartment stoop, looking equally troubled and impatient, was Abigail.
“Abigail!” he called out, taking a step towards them, testing the ground beneath his feet to make sure he was really there, that she was really there too. Both her and the woman’s head snapped to attention. A broad smile washed away Abby’s pouted lip and she leapt from her post and ran down the walk with open arms.
“Daddy!” When she ran her shoes clicked on the sidewalk as only innocent little girls’ shoes could. John scooped her up and held her tight, knocking a pair of sunglasses from the crown of her head. “Daddy, you went away, I couldn’t find you or Beast!” John turned his head to see what Beast had made of himself. He stood on top of the telephone in the booth, stranded, but yapping furiously for his little girl.
The distraught man put Abigail down on the sidewalk and sank onto one knee, holding tight onto her arms. “Abigail, where did you go? I told you I was going to get you some water, and when I came back you were gone!”
“I threw Beast’s stick over the wall,” she admitted sorely, realizing she had caused her normally calm and cool daddy a great deal of concern. “I’m sorry Daddy. I went to go get it; I had to go outside the park and around the corner to get it again. Daddy, are you mad at me?” She squinted in the sun and her eyebrows pushed together in an upside-down ‘V’ on her forehead.
John glanced her up and down; eyeing her flesh for bruises or cuts. Apart from the mahogany island of a scab that had developed days ago on her knee from a trip up the stairs, she appeared clean. “No, Darling,” he managed to crack a smile through the clamp of his jaw, “no, I’m not mad at you. But you should have waited for me, alright?” and she nodded in agreement. For a girl of five, Abigail possessed a highly developed sense of morality. If she ever snuck a brownie before dinner, she always came forward to confess not five minutes later, covered in sticky brown crumbs.
Letting go of her, the perspiring man stood up, reached into the phone booth and snatched Beast from his perch. He squirmed in my grip and kicked all around until released onto the ground so he could lick Abigail’s hands and arms. “Stop it Beast!” she giggled as she bent over to pick up the sunglasses that had fallen from her head.
“Abby, whose are those?” John asked her and she put them on her face. She reminded him of a tree-flower alien child. He knelt back down for a better look at them. There were two pronounced scratches on the right lens from when they had fallen.
Abigail turned her head to where she had come from; John hesitated but mimicked her. The woman in the red dress leaned against the planter on which Abby had stood. Her arms were crossed in front of a baggy purse, and her lips pressed together into an apologetic smile. She had the face of a businesswoman: clean, assertive, but unusually out of place on the street. “That lady, her name is Roxanne,” Abigail said quietly, “she told me to stay where I was so I could find you, and she stayed with me too. She said I’d find you faster if I stood in one place, I don’t know how she knew that. She’s smart.”
“Is that so?” he whispered back, carefully pulling Roxanne’s sunglasses off of Abigail’s small face. She nodded and pressed down a wisp of hair he pulled loose from behind her ear. The man looked back at the woman and she watched him pack her sunglasses into his front pocket like a hunter loading his rifle in a deer’s direct line of sight. Her expression had dulled slightly as she shielded her eyes against the daylight again. The sun gently licked streaks of light in her dark brown hair. But the rays were not so kind to her reddening but otherwise pale neck and shoulders.
“Daddy,” Abigail cupped her hand around her mouth as to be discrete, “she’s lost too.”
John’s eyes flickered in the direction of the woman. When it was clear there was nothing more to say between him and Abigail, Roxanne recognized her opportunity to shyly creep forward. She put on another smile as John rose to a more dignified standing position and held out his hand to thank her. Her shoes clicked one the sidewalk when she walked.
“Glad we could find you,” she said lightly to him. She wrinkled her nose playfully at Abigail like they had a little secret between them. She shook his hand once as she began to say, “I’m—”
“Roxanne,” he nodded, cutting her off abruptly. “I’m John,” he replied and hastily re-pocketed his hand, embarrassed. He hadn’t realized how sweaty his palms were until they greased over the woman’s soft grip. She seemed not to care or, he hoped, notice. “John Hours,” he added his last name for a brief moment of self-importance, but immediately felt foolish like a failed pretend secret agent. And to his dismay, Roxanne’s smile faded into what looked like confusion. But it only lasted a brief moment before her lips parted again, revealing two rows of white teeth in a curious smile.
“John Hours?” she repeated, looking down at Abigail with astonished eyebrows, then back at him. She carefully studied his face, “as in Johnson Q. Hours, the author?” John was startled that she’d heard of, let alone recognized him. She must have been from the States, probably the Midwest judging by her complete absence of accent. Most of John’s books were published only in Europe but every now and then his publishers would sell out to America and send them a couple box loads of his better sellers.
“You’ve heard of me?” he asked somewhat skeptically in a quiet voice. Roxanne chortled gently through pearly teeth.
She nodded and reassured him, “Sure, you’re right up there with Sylvia Platt. I read a few chapters of Dancing With Hilda in an English class in college and couldn’t get enough so I bought the whole book!” Turning to Abby she said, “Abigail, you didn’t tell me your father was the man-in-a-white-shirt who happens to be a famous writer.” Abigail grabbed her father’s hand and hid her face behind it, giggling. Roxanne crossed her arms and wet her lips with a habitual push of her tongue.
“Well,” John breathed after a short pause in conversation. His hand made its way to his breast pocket of its own moral accord and revealed the damaged sunglasses. His clumsy finger tripped the trigger a moment too soon and he stumbled through his shot. “I—I’m sorry, I believe these are yours?” Roxanne nodded in understanding and retrieved them, examining the lenses. “They fell on the walk, I’d be happy to buy you a new pair,” he offered rather hopelessly.
“It’s alright, they were just a few pounds at the airport,” she replied half sincerely and put them into her purse. She looked back up at him, squinting in the sun. She was barely over five feet tall, maybe five-foot-two: a near foot shorter than Johnson.
Dumbstruck by her lack of remorse, he couldn’t do anything but grin apologetically. He recognized the linked ‘DG’ on either side of the lenses. No airport he ever heard of sold ‘a few pounds’ worth of genuine Dolce & Gabbanna lenses. Hastily he changed the subject.
“Really Miss, I don’t think I can thank you enough for finding my Abigail. I’d be happy to pay you back somehow?” He reflected the question to himself. How on earth do you reward a complete stranger for safely returning your missing child? Money? A free meal? Whatever he had on-hand? Here Lady, take my dog. Johnson backtracked. “Maybe brunch or supper?” he suggested. His jaw flushed where Hara would eventually lay her spindly palm when she found out—if she found out. John was pretty good at keeping secrets from his shayna. Or maybe it was shiksa. Johnson could never keep his Yiddish straight. Well, so what of it if a respectable businessman offered a fellow respectable businesswoman a hearty thank-you? Johnson grew annoyed with himself for feeling so embarrassed.
“Oh,” the corner of Roxanne’s eyebrow had creased two fine wrinkles near the edge of her hairline in contemplation. It was the look of a company executive or chairwoman considering a deal involving an insignificant sum of money. John’s pockets felt very empty. “Thank you for the offer, but it’s really alright,” she started and he butted in, putting up his free hand to stop her.
“Please, I insist, just as a thank you.” It really was the least he could do. After all, Abigail had said she was lost, and she certainly looked the part too. Her black curls showed evidence of wind-harassment and the burn on her shoulders indicated a lengthy period of aimless wandering in the sun.
She inhaled a deep breath of contemplation, and after a second thought, she nodded in agreement. “I suppose so, that would be fine,”
“Were you planning on dining at Red & Rose this afternoon? I overheard your question to the man at the ice-cream cart earlier, you seemed—I was just wondering—”
“Actually, I don’t have any dinner plans for tonight, any more,” she added, “I just was… well, am a little lost. I was actually looking for the corner of Red and Rose Avenues, but my cab driver misunderstood,” she shrugged, arms still crossed over her chest. Her bulky purse hung from one of her shoulders like a white and brass pet leather slug. “I should have been more clear I guess. I didn’t know there was an actual restaurant called Red & Rose,” she found herself laughing as her gaze trailed off over John’s shoulder toward the infamous bistro on the other side of the park.
“Well, what are the odds?” He laughed to reassure her.
“Mm,” she sighed and looked back at him. In the short moment she had glanced away her eyes turned from a brilliant green to an equally brilliant deep cyan. It was as if someone extracted all of the lime pigment from her irises and replaced it with the sky. Every now and then Johnson detected slight changes in his own eye-color, from copper to hazel to gray. But they changed according to his wardrobe, as if meant to camouflage like fashionably color-coordinated accessories. Never had he witnessed such a dramatic color-change under any other circumstances before, not in anyone else he knew. He suddenly found himself staring when she quickly lowered her eyes to avoid his gaze. She cracked a smile at the sight of Beast. His pink tongue wriggled like a flat worm, flapping in the wind of his breath. He stared non-complacently back at her.
“Well, I’d be happy to treat you, really. Around seven o’clock sound all right? Where can I find you?”
“Daddy!” Abigail leaped out from behind John’s hand in absolute astonishment, stomping her shoes as she stepped between the adults. “I’m sleeping over at Colette’s house tonight, remember? I’m not coming,” she said so more matter-of-fact than as a complaining whine. John bent over and picked her up to rest her on his shoulder.
“Well, I’m sorry you won’t be joining us,” he apologized in a deep gentlemanly voice. Roxanne watched with an affectionate smirk.
“And Daddy,” she went on, squirming on his shoulder to get her other foot around his neck like a noodle-legged equestrian, “tomorrow morning I won’t be joining us for breakfast either, okay?” She was using her big-girl voice she developed from mimicking his reprimanding her.
Her father sighed and exaggeratingly shrugged his shoulders, lifting her up considerably. She laughed excitedly. “Well lucky you because Hara wanted to make Lox and bagels,” he kidded her. And even though he couldn’t see more than her puny Mary-Janes, he knew from Roxanne’s sudden outburst of laughter Abby had made a real pretty face expressing her firm opinion of fish. Grasping onto one of Abby’s legs John returned his attention to Roxanne. “Apparently we won’t be enjoying the pleasure of Abby’s presence tonight,” he slowly tried to U-turn back to his question. “So, are you staying at a hotel?”
“I’m at the Chateau Noire Inn, on Dorrington… It’s a small,” Roxanne gestured with her pale hands, “compact place, easy to miss.”
“I look forward to it, Miss…” he trailed off, realizing he never learned her last name. It certainly would be a useful bit of information if he were to ask the desk clerk to ring her room.
“Mizz, Daddy,” Abigail dropped from behind my head, “you’re supposed to call her Mizz Roxanne, like Mizz Liz from next door.” A small laugh escaped Roxanne before she interjected.
“Actually, Misses,” it was hard to tell whether she was correcting Abigail or carefully dropping some sort of hint, like attempting to subtly reveal a fire-breathing dragon hidden behind the living room couch. “Mrs. Byers.”
John nodded and repeated the name, “Byers,” but his attention ebbed towards the distant cry and wail of a nearing siren. …Oh dear.

[Abra]

SPOILER: Click to show

Johnson welcomed the soothing blanket of cold air with the utmost gratification. Abigail and Beast ripped through the front door ahead of him, leaving it open for the slim man to close. He stood on the threshold for a quick moment, caught between the midday heat on the front steps and the refreshing air conditioning from within the house. The unorthodox mix of hot and cold numbed the events of the morning that still scrambled around in his brain. But eventually his superego pointed out the worldwide struggle for the conservation of energy and scolded him to shut the door.
John had offered to walk Roxanne back to her hotel, but she kindly declined. She said it was much too far for walking and made a better cab ride; so he called her one instead. They waited together in near silence after John received an earful from the police officer. Abigail almost started crying underneath the shouting and the swearing, but quickly dried her tears at the prospect of getting ice cream on the way home: a treat for an eventful day.
John didn’t have to remind Abigail not to mention their day’s excitement. She knew Hara was under the impression that they had gone to church. And either way, Abigail didn’t usually say much to Hara, though John’s girlfriend tried to spark a few words out of Abby from time to time. It was too bad they didn’t like each other as John had hoped. Hara was very attractive and might have made a smart wife. But playing wife was worlds apart from playing mother. And Hara just didn’t have it in her John supposed. She hadn’t any children of her own, so the paranormal parental instincts that only kick in after you birth, or witness the birth of your own child didn’t exist in her biology. Then again, John shouldn’t be one to judge. Abigail was the product of what was supposed to be a one-night stand.
Well. That’s embarrassing.
Johnson was more than a little surprised to see his mistress at his front door nine months later. She wanted him to have Abigail because her boyfriend didn’t want children in their relationship at the time, and they didn’t believe in orphanages. So John took Abby for her own safety and need for love. She’s been his entire life ever since.
“Good afternoon Johnson,” the housekeeper greeted him from the mezzanine on the stairs.
“How’s it?” John smiled up at Ratin-Ravi who was dusting the picture frames hanging on the wall. He was sitting on the top step, cleaner and towel in hand. A presentable stack of polished pictures sat at his right hip, eager to be hung in their proper places on the wall. The dusty ones waited patiently on his left.
“Oh, you know,” he sighed pathetically and grimaced at his host, but John could still see the smile behind his clownish frown like the blaze of daylight behind a poorly boarded up window. “The pay is steamy dung, I can’t get fed, and there’s no one to make me popcorn anymore,” they laughed together about his minor love for popcorn. If he could have, he would have probably eaten it every meal for the rest of his life, at least as a side dish. “The usual, I suppose.” His accent was thick and foreign, tethered to a rich, distant harbor south of the equator.
“Well maybe you ought to quit your job then, Ravi,” John joked with him and made his way into the study.
“Maybe I will!” Ratin-Ravi seemingly threatened dangerously, but his words were laced and embroidered with the promise of staying for as long as he was welcome. Ratin-Ravi was Ethiopian by ethnicity but South African by birth. He came from Cape Town and grew up under the ceaseless crack of apartheid whips and guns. When he was just a teenager he had managed to escape to Britain in 1976 after his high school went on strike against learning Afrikaans, or the White Language. A bulbous, pink-skinned police officer shot his best friend in the back at the demonstration. Ratin-Ravi never liked to talk much about his life in South Africa. But he loved to share the stories he picked up from his childhood and his journey north. Whenever John was away on business or cross-country for an interview, Ratin-Ravi told Abigail a bedtime story after tucking her in every night. Abigail’s favorite story was about the Partridge and the Jackal.

“Please tell it again?” Abigail whined from under her comforter, refusing to sleep until her demands were met.
“Okay, okay, you stubborn girl,” Ratin-Ravi sighed a playful laugh and pulled his chair closer to the bed to begin his epic tale.
“The Partridge wasn’t always beautiful,” he began, gesturing generously with his hands. “Do you know how she became beautiful? One day, many years ago, the Partridge rolled and rolled and rolled on the forest floor, in the dirt and the leaves and the brush, until her feathers had a beautiful ivory sheen! Then, she flew up to the tallest mountain and pecked and pecked and pecked against the rock, until her beak glowed a beautiful ruby color. And then she gazed into the sky, she gazed and gazed, until her eyes turned to the most beautiful deep blue you have ever seen.
“The Partridge flew down from the mountain and came across an elephant, and he said ‘Oh Partridge, you are so beautiful and so magnificent, your feet must not touch the ground! Please, ride on my back so I may carry you to the nearest watering hole to show the other animals how beautiful you are.’ The Partridge agreed and rode on the Elephant’s back to the water hole. There, everyone admired her; she was so beautiful! But the Jackal admired her most of all. He went up to the Elephant from behind, and asked the Partridge sweetly, ‘Partridge, just how did you become so magnificent?’ The Partridge told Jackal her story.
“‘First, I rolled and rolled and rolled on the forest floor, in the dirt and the leaves and the brush, until my feathers had this ivory sheen, as you see now. Then, I flew up to the tallest mountain and pecked and pecked and pecked against the rock, until my beak glowed this ruby color, as you see now. Finally, I gazed and gazed and gazed into the sky, until my eyes turned this deep blue, as you see now.’ The Jackal, sly and deceitful, though not terribly clever, wanted ever so much to be beautiful like the Partridge! He walked away from the watering hole, leaving everyone else to admire the Partridge’s beauty.
“The next morning, when Jackal awoke, he rolled and rolled and rolled on the forest floor, in the dirt and the leaves and the brush, until all of his fur fell of. Then, he climbed the tallest mountain and pecked and pecked and pecked against the rock, until his nose broke. Finally, he gazed into the sky, he gazed and gazed, until the brilliant light from the sun blinded him. And as he climbed down from the mountain, stumbling in his blindness, promptly tripped over a rock, fell off the edge, and died.”
Abigail would giggle furiously at the silliness of the end of Ratin-Ravi’s Partridge and Jackal story. Personally, it reminded John something of the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons on TV from when he was in grade school: one way or another, Wile E. Coyote always managed to fall off the face of a cliff, surviving buck-naked with a broken nose and stars in his eyes.

Sneaking up on his computer now, a horrendously familiar desire compelled John to somehow subtly squeeze the day’s happenings into his current book. He swept the laptop off the desk and brought it across the room to the armchair and ottoman. There he laid it out and sat before it in reverse order: the laptop perched comfortably in the seat of the armchair while he hunched over it from the footrest. John began to type:

Her words shot a tremendous hole through his stomach like a cannon blast, and before he could contain himself, Adam turned away and sobbed a single yelp into his quivering hand. A bolt of grief electrified him from the ground up, searing every blood vessel in his entire being as it coursed through his body. His mother-in-law, after a long period of silence, emitted a terrifically delayed shriek.
Three pairs of feet stomped up the hardwood stairs, shaking the banister and trembling the walls. Adam Presley led the party to his young son’s room. He flung the door open and dashed to his son’s bedside, sobbing and wailing like a child, lost from his mother in a limitless mass of bodies. His lips pulled his cheeks away, stretched into a garish grimace, revealing two rows of brittle, wood-like teeth. He held his arms out, either in gesture to pleadingly question this punishment by God, or because he simply did not know what to do with his hands. The way in which his eyes and body hastily scanned the surface of his son’s bed suggested the latter.
“My son,” Adam spat hoarsely and lifted the bed sheet from the boy’s face. The man stared perplexed at the face of the young boy, not recognizing it through the coldness and stillness of death.
But after a short moment, Adam could not recognize the face at all. Adam Presley was weeping over a completely unfamiliar boy, at least two or three years his son’s senior.
“This is not my son!” he roared, careening his neck around to look at the housekeeper, unsure whether to be angrier with her or with whoever had replaced his son with a complete stranger. No, not a stranger, but someone else’s son. “This is not my son,” he sobbed again. Adam was at a complete loss. There was a dead youth in his own son’s bed; he had absolutely no knowledge why it was there, but he might have suspected who had committed the crime.
“Get me that boy,” Adam demanded to no one in particular, “the boy from the race track! I want a word with him, in person, not on the telephone! Get me that boy!”

He read his chapters over and over, editing small bits here and there, revising sentences every now and then. In the four hours he spent leaning into my computer, reading and rereading, writing and rewriting, the only real progress he managed was that lone, measly page. But progress was progress and he wasn’t working towards any particular deadline. According to John’s agent he was taking a two-year break from writing. But every time the slender man picked up a book or the newspaper, without even reading it, a compulsion chewed at his stomach like hunger. More often than not John failed to focus on the story. The text swam from one corner of his eye to the other as his gaze caressed the well cared for text. And all he could think about was what to write. It was like some kind of conspiracy every known author, editor and journalist confided in to make Johnson jealous, to make him write against his will. As much as he despised it, he loved the feeling. At least it motivated him to empty his days’ turmoil into his hard drive. And there it sat and cooked, patiently taking its time to bake and rise with every little pinch of yeast he added to it.
The slam of the front door was the unfortunately violent wreck of John’s train of thought. It jolted him back to reality and he looked up at the wall clock hanging above the doorway. It was a quarter to five.
John scrambled to his feet, awkwardly wedging his way off the ottoman.
And then he stood up.
Four and a half hours of sitting like a breaker boy during the Great Depression in America turned his spine inside out. A pathetic yowl escaped his thin lips when the pain swelled for the first time. He stood paralyzed above the ottoman with a leg on either side. He couldn’t find the will to move. If he adjusted his posture in any way, the searing hurt would come back like the nasty bite of a crocodile that enjoyed what he tasted.
“Johnny, that you in there?”
Johnson twisted his neck to see who was there, wincing at the generous stabs that invaded his upper-backside. Hara stood in the doorway, shooting him with the most peculiar look. “Johnny, are you alright?”
John must have made the most ridiculous shapes with his mouth trying to find the words to respond. Hara wrinkled her nose like she smelled a foul odor. “I uh, stood up funny.”
Hara’s eyebrows furrowed and she stared at John’s legs. “I can see that.”
His faint voice rasped from having not been used for a generous amount of time. Clearing his throat he nodded his head and attempted to confidently assure her, “I’m fine.”
She took a step into the room but stopped short, deciding whether or not John should be moved. “Are you sure Darling? You look as though you’re in a lot of pain,” he looked away to scratch the back of his head more easily, stuttering a little as he changed the subject in embarrassment.
“D-do you want to go out for dinner tonight? I invited, uh,” he fumbled over his tongue, not sure how to bring up his nameless relationship with Roxanne: was she a friend? A colleague? Abigail’s savior? “I invited an acquaintance,” John nodded, impressed by his own choice of words, “from church.”
…Where in bloody hell did that come from?
“An acquaintance I met in front of the church, not in church.” He turned his head and gave her a big, toothy smile.
She found nothing amusing, just as John might have guessed. Her lips puckered together irritably and she looked up at him from under her sharp, disapproving brow. “You met a stranger,” she repeated back to him in her own words, “and invited him to dinner with us? Out of the blue?”
“She,” John corrected Hara politely in the most reasonable tone he could fathom, “watched Beast while Abigail and I went inside. He was barking and barking, she kept him quiet. So I wanted to thank her properly.”
“A proper thanks for shutting that Chihuahua up is simple enough John, ‘Alright, thanks for that, buh-bye!’ But you invited them out to dinner? You haven’t even invited my parents out to dinner!”
“Oh, come on Hara,” John spoke as assertively as he could while attempting to painlessly turn his body around and face her head on. “She’s lost in the city, I thought it would be nice. Tomorrow I’ll take you out to dinner, just us two.”
Hara crossed her arms and rotated her chest rhythmically. It was as if the gears and cogs churning in her head were hooked up to some kind of mechanism in her upper-body that ticked in her like a pendulum.
Suddenly, she stopped. “Fine,” the word hit John like a dart between the eyes. It was the only word she ever used when she wasn’t happy, but knew she could exploit her unhappiness to get what she wanted later on. She opened her mouth to say more and list her conditions, but he immediately interrupted her.
“I’m going to head up and take a shower,” he announced brokenly. Maybe the steam could help get rid of this knot, ache, whatever it is, John hoped. If anything it would wash away the layer of sweaty film he accumulated over his entire body that morning.
“Don’t fall down,” Hara said almost spitefully as he edged past her. No doubt John would have to endure her twisted, sugarcoated comments until the following evening when he could treat her to supper. It was her way of letting him know she was not at all happy.

SPOILER: Click to show

The engine sputtered when Ratin-Ravi slowed the long black car to a stop. “This it?” he asked, peering out the window for a better look at the tiny hotel. The streets were chaotically narrow in that corner of the city. The buildings crowded in on each other claustrophobically; a dusty accordion came to mind. Even the air was stagnant with dust and the odor of unusual foods because no breeze could wind its way through. To the left of the car, the Chateau Noire, or ‘Black Castle’ was neither black, nor a castle. On the contrary, it was an ancient, yellow brick, four-story inn no wider than Johnson Hour’s living room. It sagged over the cramped sidewalk sadly, heaving puffs of hot steam from its vents. The sticky clouds added to the drowning heat of the night.
“Chateau Noire…” John read the chipping paint on the black, tinted glass of the entryway, “must be.” John rested his hand on the door handle hesitantly. He leaned forward in his seat, taking in the sight. Water stains ran down the front side of the building as if the little inn was sobbing over its busted, useless gutters.
“What did you say her name was?” Hara whispered unnecessarily, leaning over his shoulder for a better view. “And she’s American?”
“Roxanne Byers,” he reminded her for the third time, “and yes, she’s American.” It was a well-known fact that Hara Rosenstein did not get along with Americans very well. She said they’ve ‘Corrupted the entire worldly economy, and that’s why we still have third-world countries.’ In all honesty John wasn’t sure if Hara could tell the difference between a third-world country and the rest of the non-United Kingdom. She was the sort of well brought-up girl who got nearly everything she wanted. Her father was a rabbi and her mother’s family owned a chain of kosher restaurants called Rivka’s Diner. No doubt they had a few hundred extra euros here and there to spend on their only child. Hara was so spoiled she had a Sweet Sixteen for her fourteenth birthday party.
In an escape from saying anything more about Roxanne or where she came from, John carefully slipped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. Heat from the long-lasting rays of sun cooked the walk and everything on it like a broiler and he could feel the warmth through the soles of his leather shoes. He propped himself up on the trunk of the car, very careful to keep his back from bending. John couldn’t bring himself to cancel dinner on account of his spine. He was far too ashamed. He realized he was starting to get old, and rather quickly at that. John would soon hit forty, and then what? Half of his life, gone in an instant in the vast expanse of time and he was already starting to pay the toll. No, no, he reassured himself, you’re not getting old, just stupid. John figured if he hadn’t hunched over his computer like a ten-year-old he might be able to stand upright and walk without flinching. It could have happened to anyone he reminded himself. Anyone at all, that’s right John, you keep telling yourself that.
The sun was still up but hid behind an encroaching truss of bruised clouds. Its rays lit up the backs of the blue-grey puffs, illuminating the rest of the sky. The windowpanes on the front door of the hotel winked a sunny reflection when it opened.
“Sorry,” it was Roxanne. She had slipped into view and let the weight of the door shut itself behind her. “They’re painting the stairs, I went out back to get some fresh air and didn’t hear you pull up…” she trailed off as her gaze fell over John’s car, his housekeeper, and his girlfriend. A vague glint of surprise lit up her eyes and she turned to him and whispered rather excitedly, “You have your own driver?”
It took a painfully long time for John to realize who was talking to him. Her black coffee-colored froth of hair was pulled back in a loose twist. “Oh, no,” John’s voice shook as he nearly lost his balance. A stab of pain gouged its way up into John’s tailbone and twisted it like a corkscrew. “No, this is my, my, my driver—housekeeper,” it sure was hard to speak and hold back a yowl at the same time. “And my Hara, girlfriend Rosenstein,” he gestured with a crooked hand. John’s neck flushed hot red as he felt everyone’s skewed gaze slowly draw to him.
“Johnny, are you okay?” Hara made as though she wanted to step out of the car but John was blocking the edge of the door.
“Fine,” he grimaced and stepped aside. The pain had subsided. For now.
“Suh,” Ratin-Ravi tipped his chauffer hat up away from his brow, (it was a ghastly addition to the sweaty work shirt and blue jeans he was wearing: he thought the cap was hilarious and always wore it behind the wheel). “You want to take a breather?”
“Fine!”
“Hi, I’m Roxanne,” the woman smiled at Ratin-Ravi and stuck her hand hastily to the open window.
“How’s it!” he shook her hand and then tipped the hat in reverse, pulling it back down towards his nose in a very cool fashion that John envied. But out of the corner of Johnson’s eye he noticed Hara staring down at her outfit, then peering out the open door at Roxanne’s with a look of pure repulsion. The only difference in their little black dresses was the straps. Hara’s were spaghetti. Roxanne had none.
“Hara,” John spoke coolly but with a suppressed nervous flare. He sounded as though he was trying to calm the postal worker who showed up one Friday morning—and was packing. “Hara, this is Roxanne Byers,” Hara put on her best smile and gave the American a princess wave from inside the vehicle.
“Nice to meet you Roxanne. Love your dress.”
“Really?” there was a hint of sincerity in her voice but she had already eyed Hara’s outfit from the door and wished she hadn’t wasted the only other dress she’d packed on the morning.
When Hara didn’t reply Johnson knew it was time to vamoose. Ratin-Ravi must have sensed his anxiety because he gave the horn a good pounding. Hara jumped. “Let’s get a move on, couz!”
“Ravi, people are sleeping!” Hara whispered harshly over the black man’s soft cackle.
“Hara, it’s only seven in the eve’n!”
“People have babies and babies sleep at seven in the evening. Abigail’s bedtime is eight o’clock,” Abigail’s bedtime really was about nine-thirty to whenever but John didn’t want to reprimand her, at least not in front of company. Not when Hara was already tinkled to all Hell at him. Ratin-Ravi must have felt the same because he pursed his lips together in commanded silence. His shoulders shook as he let an inaudible chuckle escape his body.
With great gusto, pain, and what felt like an iron rod up his ass, John stepped aside to let Roxanne in. She thanked him and slid over next to Hara. They exchanged repulsed smiles and looked away.
“To Tangiere’s?” Ratin-Ravi asked as he adjusted his cap and aired his shirt with a little flapping of his arms like a chicken dance.
“To Tangiere’s,” Johnson agreed and slid in next to Roxanne.
And then Hara did it.
“Do Americans really consider anyone earning five million dollars a year to be ‘middle class’?” She looked right into Roxanne’s face. Roxanne stared back in absolute perplexity. No, she wasn’t perplexed, Johnson thought, she was downright offended. Johnson, cringed and sagged into the car door pathetically. But what he expected to be a dark and agonizing silence was shattered by Roxanne’s sudden crackle of laughter.
Hara face-planted into blatant shock. But it only took a few short seconds before she had to really work to suppress a smile, and then a hearty chuckle. They both appreciated what ended up resorting to be a joke, and for that John was very grateful.


It was a shame that it had to rain that night. Johnson absolutely loved sitting on the pier at Tangiere’s. Little string lights hung from a net above the restaurant’s little section of the boardwalk like summer-time icicles, warm and glimmering in the gentle current-blown breeze that raked the water. But tonight the three diners scampered straight for the brown-brick establishment, cluttering the doorway with wet stamping shoes and damp umbrellas. John had watched the bus boys scurry to roll the tables aside and stack the chairs along the rope railing. The patio furniture was calling it a night: even if the rain did subside, no one wanted to drop into a chair and just as quickly leap up in bewilderment of sitting in an icy puddle.
After a fleeting wait, Johnson’s party-of-three were soon shown to their table.
Wine and water glasses clinked, silverware plinked, and the low hum of dinner-appropriate conversation hung in the air. All was relatively calm and cool, except for Hara’s excited chattering.
“So after that, I went up to the editor and told her what had happened. Naturally, she was mortified, I mean in the bathroom? But I didn’t want to get Mary in trouble, I mean, she is my friend after all, so I left out her name. I told Cassandra—she’s the editor—I told Cassandra that it was just a rumor and I had only heard that something had happened. Later that afternoon poor Hilary was fired. Someone probably added on to that little ‘rumor’ and well,” she heaved a heavy sigh, a deep breath of relief to share with the rest of the table in her unbroken rant, “accidents happen.”
The quiet click of a pen from above Hara’s shoulder thinned her lips in surprise. Her neck flushed a little but she primped her hair and paid no heed to the server’s looming presence. She tried not to wonder how long he’d been standing there, listening in on the scandal of the week.
“Good evening everyone, my name is Roland, I will be your server for this evening,” came the speech all four of them had heard at least a thousand times in their lives. “Can I start you all off with your drinks?” With an acrobatic flip of his arms he presented an impressive list of names and numbers, all categorized into two colors: red and white. “May I interest you in a glass of the Merlot of the season or our new Chardonnay?”
The mere suggestion of a deep red wine lulled Johnson’s spine and he gently leaned into the back of his chair with ease. “What do you say we have a bottle, Hara? Roxanne?”
Both girls opened their mouths but Hara’s words escaped first. “I say yea!” She beamed from Johnson to Roland and to Roxanne, who remained silent.
John turned his head a little as though her expression might be different from another angle. “Roxanne?”
She laughed nervously up at the waiter with her apologetic smile and replied, “Just a glass of water, thank you.”
“Oh come on, have a glass, Roxanne,” insisted Hara merrily. The server turned from girl to girl, rotating at the hips like a ballerina.
“No, really, I shouldn’t,” Roxanne said as she shrank into her chair a little, resting her hands in her lap.
“Well, it is Sunday,” Johnson said aloud to no one in particular. Roland responded with a thoughtful shrug of agreement.
“No, it isn’t that.”
Hara gently placed her hand on Roxanne’s and smiled as she crooned, “It’s okay.”
After a pause Roxanne gently reciprocated the gesture by taking Hara’s hand and resting it on the tabletop. She tapped on the table softly in thought before retiring her own hands once more to her lap. Boldly she lifted her head and strained to announce, “No, I’m pregnant.”
Roland’s pen slipped from his fingers and he fumbled awkwardly for it before it fell soundlessly to the carpet. Instead of bending down for it he fished for another in his back pocket. Scribbling down chicken scratch he embarrassedly grumbled, “Two glasses and one water.” And he bustled hastily off without another word.
The disturbingly uncomfortable silence lingering around the table was deafening. A round, pinkish man at the next table hacked into his napkin. When still no one said a word, Roxanne smiled politely and continued, “That’s actually why I’m here.”
The look on Hara’s face was nothing less than perplexed.
“You’re—You’re not here on business?” Johnson’s mouth hung slightly agape and Hara reluctantly found his tone riddled with both relief and a bit of disappointment. But she kept her comments to herself.
“Business?” repeated Roxanne with humored surprise. “Why would you think that?”
In truth, Johnson wasn’t sure anymore. The upper-middle class appeal he saw in her earlier that afternoon had long since extinguished, and he only now realized it. She didn’t look plain by any means; she was still elegant. But her sharp face in the dimly lit restaurant no longer peered in humorous fascination at the common world. Instead it looked out from it.
When Johnson didn’t respond (but rather sat there with his jaw hanging loose,) Roxanne explained, “My husband is part of a touring theater company. He’s sort of an all-purpose understudy or stand-in, in case any of the cast or crew get sick.” John and Hara looked at each other disconcertedly. “I wanted to surprise him, that’s why I was looking for Red and Rose,” she gestured toward Johnson, “that’s where the theater is.” She paused. Again, no one made a sound and Roxanne began to feel pressured to explain herself to the fullest extent. “So… I wanted to surprise him here in England and tell him the good news. I wanted to make the matinee but I couldn’t bring myself to walk all that way in the sun after a fourty-dollar cab fee. I was hoping to stop by his apartment after the evening show ended tonight.”
After a moment Hara leaned back in her chair with a half smile. “Well,” she sighed, not exactly sure how to respond. “Congratulations.” Roxanne leaned forward against the table, smiling a little. She then looked across the table at Johnson.
Johnson nearly jumped in his seat. There it was again: that pair of magical eyes. It may have been dark in the four-star restaurant but even so, Johnson could no longer see any trace of green behind those lashes. Instead her eyes were filled with a bright but empty blue. “So, what is it that you do?” he strained to change the subject, blinking heavily to break their eye contact.
“Nothing,” she replied.
“…Nothing?” repeated Hara flatly.
“Well, I’m in between jobs,” Roxanne tried her hardest not to sound offended. “I do a lot of volunteer work, so that takes up a lot of my time.”
“Oh, are you volunteering for the campaigns in the States?” Hara questioned with earnest interest. Hara loved talking politics.
“No… animal rescue shelters and hospitals. I’m a fosterer, I foster animals.”
“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice couldn’t have been clearer. She attempted to stay in the conversation by trying to sound interested. “What kinds of animals? Like, pets and stuff or horses and those other big ones?”
“Dogs mostly. Though, I did have a potbellied pig once,” Roxanne reflected thoughtfully with a wry smile. “My other dogs liked her a lot.”
“How many do you have?” Johnson asked curiously. He often wondered the perils of having more than one pet at a time. He never had any pets as a kid save for a toad he caught in his grandfather’s pond one summer when he was seven. Beast was enough of a handful now and he was only a scrawny Chihuahua. John couldn’t imagine what one more of those things would do to the back yard.
“How many Fosters? I just adopted out a Shar Pei mix last week, so I don’t…”
“How many do you keep?” he clarified.
Roxanne paused and shrank back a little, harboring a devious smile Johnson often recognized on Abigail when she’d done something she probably shouldn’t have, but enjoyed very much. “I keep,” she started but trailed off again and began to count in her head. “I keep… probably half of the ones that come through my house. Maybe a little less. The ones that can’t get adopted, the older ones. I just hold on to them.”
“So…?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen dogs!” Hara’s jaw nearly dropped from her skull. Roxanne laughed at her.
Clearly this woman was fond of animals, Johnson thought. He could scarcely believe her though. “They’re little dogs though, right? How do you feed all of them, isn’t that a lot of money?”
“Oh, I get discounts on food. And they eat leftovers sometimes, though they probably shouldn’t… it tends to fatten them up. And no, they’re--” she turned her head as Roland swooped in with a circular tray of wine, glasses, and ice water, “--big mutts.” She smiled up at Roland who stared down at her with what Johnson thought might have been sudden fear. Roxanne thanked him for the water and stared down into the glass with minor embarrassment.
Roland poured the wine and John lifted his glass after he left. “Well, I suppose this evening wouldn’t be able to start properly without a toast. Roxanne, thank you for your… help earlier today.”
She smiled. Hara mirrored her, grinning at Johnson. But there was a sort of content expectedness behind her eyes. She wanted a toast too, that much was clear to him.
“And Hara,” John paused as he bit at his lower lip thoughtfully. “L’chaim,” he whispered teasingly and clinked his glass into hers before downing it.
The man sitting behind Johnson coughed loudly, startling Johnson in his seat. The jolt sent a strain of stabbing pains through his spine.
From behind the large man gurgled through a glass of water and clapped it on the tabletop. He was addressed by a wave of turning heads and craning necks. The old man looked around with embarrassment and tried to suppress another gruff hack but it exploded from his chest. When he removed the napkin both it and his lips were painted red with blood. The elderly woman with him, presumably his wife, stood up in alarm and her chair swooned behind her. “John!” she shrieked. Johnson spun around in alarm. The pain was too much.
Both men slid from their chairs and onto the plush red carpet like marionettes. Only one of them was resuscitated.

[Abra]

SPOILER: Click to show

The entire room was spinning even before he opened his eyes. Johnson could feel it. The dim glare of a grey sky hung outside the bedroom window and lit the room, just barely. Moisture almost leaked in through the French windows, it was so humid. Johnson groaned sleepily, disappointed in having woken up already.
“Wait a minute,” he sat up but immediately flinched to the pain that would inevitably grab a hold of his spinal cord and split it right down the middle. He waited. But it never came. He stared out the windows across the room from the mussed bedding and wreath of pillows that had surrounded his head. “What time is it?” he asked aloud. Nobody answered. From the looks of it, it could have been any time at all: stormy and dark. It may have still been seven-thirty for all he knew.
…What the hell just happened?
Johnson leaned over to the bedside table nearest the door and wavered his hand around in the air for the clock. It made a light cracking sound as he punched it with his knuckle, sending it to the floor. Hastily he rolled out of bed and picked it up again to read the time like a very old and precious letter. It flashed a big, red “12:00” at him, illuminating his face like a flickering neon sign.
What did happen, he wondered to himself. He looked down at his clothes. He was wearing pajamas: that much was obvious. A pair of sleeping pants Hara bought him last year that he’d only ever worn once before. He rose to his feet and tested his back a little, stretching up and down and to both sides. “Well, that’s something new,” he laughed to himself with great relief. He stood in front of the doorway for a moment, not really sure what to do.
He lingered in the doorway for a moment, not really sure what to make of himself… He itched nervously at the tag in the seat of his pants and stumbled into the hallway, ignoring the little man that began to narrate his every move in his head. Or at least he tried to.
Stooping towards the bedroom door down the hall, he crept on the carpet as not to awaken—oh, but the little princess was not asleep in her chamber. She had gone away to the Duchess Colette’s grand castle not a block away. But it had occurred to him that perhaps it wasn’t time for sleeping at all… a clock. The man needed a clock.
His feet made great smacking noises on the solid floor when he walked to the kitchen. He gandered over the refrigerator at the battery-powered, round-faced clock that ticked incessantly during silent meals.
It’s 8:34, it told him.
“Eight-thirty-four what?” he implored, but that stubborn pile of cogs wouldn’t say. “Hara?” he called out to the darkness of the house. “Hara, are you here?”
“Yes’mmmmm,” the high and curious voice slid through the walls from the foyer.
Johnson made his way around and was stupid with embarrassment when he saw Ratin-Ravi sitting on the ottoman with a large encyclopedia. He should have known, and laughed at himself for his gullibility. “Ravi, you fool,” John laughed. The sight of Ravi’s big, brown face certainly lifted his mood.
“Yes’mmmm?” Ratin-Ravi crooned as he peered over the book with big, round eyes. He batted his lashes and sucked in his cheeks. “You caaaaalled?”
“Very charming,” Johnson stepped forward and patted Ratin-Ravi on the cheek. He responded with kissey-faces and sucking noises. “Sorry, not today Darling,” he joked and scanned the room for his laptop. Where in the hell did he put it? The clock in there would tell him if it was morning or night.
“Well why not!” Ratin-Ravi threw the encyclopedia down into the chair as he crossed his arms and stuck out his chest (which consequently lead to sticking out his buttocks).
John could only smile politely and ask nervously, “Ravi, what time is it?”
Ratin-Ravi leaned forward onto his elbows and stared at the kitchen door as though he could read the clock through the walls. “About eight-thirty, I guess?”
“Eight-thirty what?”
Ratin-Ravi stared up at Johnson, stricken with fear. Before Johnson could ask what was wrong, Ravi slapped at his knee and exploded with laughter. “Shoot, you bandicoot! You don’t remembah? Shoot,” he kept saying and Johnson was growing worried.
“Don’t remember what? What happened? What time is it!”
“Johnny boy, it’s eight-thirty in the morning. You fell outta you chair last night at supper. Ain’t nobody could tell steamy dung from Shinola on what was wrong when Hara mentioned you poor back. It was lucky they called a doctor on accounta that man who died.”
“What?” Johnson wondered if he heard right. “Who died?”
“Sure did, suh.”
“No Ravi, who died?”
“Oh, I dunno! Some big ol’ man, said he had a heart attack. Funny though, his name was Johnny too. Just John though, he ain’t have no last name for his first.” Ratin-Ravi picked up the Encyclopedia and began flipping through the pages. “But he ain’t have no heart-attack on accounta he so big or nothing. They say he had something ain’t nobody seen for a long time. Mouse Disease or somefigger.”
“Mouse Disease?”
“Yeah, I ain’t never heard of it either. I been sittin’ here, lookin’ through this dang Encyclopedia for short of an hour. Can’t find nothing on it.”
“When did this all happen?”
“Right after you ol’ fool fainted. Doctor come in, say ‘Wrap ‘em up!’ on that big feller, and he take one look at you and one listen from Hara and her runnin’ mouth, and he stick you with some anesthetic or somethin’ to take the pain away.”
“Yeah, my back doesn’t hurt anymore. A little sore, but at least I can walk,” John looked into the Encyclopedia. “Are you sure you’re spelling that right?”
“Hell if I know. I only know one way to spell ‘Mouse’, unless you wanna start talking ‘bout that Nazi cat book Hara keeps yabbering about. That’s ‘M-A-U-S’.”
They stared at each other. Then urgently turned back a couple of pages in search of the new spelling. Johnson thought they must have spent five minutes scanning the page up and down before Ratin-Ravi pointed in the middle of the page. “There it is!” he announced excitedly and read the description. “‘Discovered by Gunther Maus in 1528, Germany, once thought to be a strain of Tubercle Bacillus (TB).’”
“Well, that was informative,” Johnson grumbled as he stood up straight again.
“What do you think they mean, ‘once thought’?”
“I guess they found out it wasn’t Tuberculosis,” Johnson surmised with a lazy shrug.
“Johnson, look here, this disease come from the 1500’s! You think that guy in the restaurant really got it?”
“I have no idea.” After a little consideration, Johnson said, “I highly doubt it. I mean, there are still cases of the Bubonic Plague every now and then, but what are the chances of those? Like one in a million?”
“You pro’lly right,” Ratin-Ravi agreed but didn’t sound entirely convinced. He slammed the book shut and it coughed up a thick cloud of dust. “Now you supposed to be resting! Get you fool self upstairs.”
“But it’s Monday, I have to go--”
“No you ain’t!” From the way Ratin-Ravi grinned, Johnson could tell he had taken the liberty of calling his publicist and cancelled the meeting John had been putting off for a couple of weeks.
A wry smile broke out on Johnson’s face and he whispered, “Ravi, you didn’t.”
Ratin-Ravi only shrugged and said, proudly, “For all I know, you got Mouse Disease.” Johnson clapped him on the back and thanked him for the day off. “Shoot, you already got one headless chicken runnin’ around in your life, you don’t got time to deal with another at the mo’. I tell you, suh, she was madder than Hara gets when you do something to her disliking. What’s that they say about them… oh yeah, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!’”
“You got that right,” John mumbled sinisterly as he peered out the window at the driveway. Empty. Good, Hara hard gone to work and wouldn’t be back until five o’clock.
“Have Colette’s parents called at all?” Johnson’s insides had been nagging for him to stray from the subject of angry women when his daughter came to mind.
“Nah, they shut up tight like a clam, you know how they are. You gotta call them youself if you want to hear any business.”
“Alright, if the girls are awake I’ll walk over and pick Abigail up around nine-thirty.”
“Good ‘cause I sure as hell ain’t gonna do it. What do I look like, the maid?” And with that Ratin-Ravi pulled a small paper maid’s hat from his pants pocket, stuffed it on his black-stubbled head and strutted away on tip-toes with his hips swaying, leaving Johnson to howl with laughter on the ottoman.
After Johnson and Abigail returned from Colette’s house, Abigail went about her daily business of playing with the tea set she got for her birthday and dressing up Beast (to his utter disliking). Johnson made his way to the living room with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Ratin-Ravi must have been kind to the television all night because when Johnson turned it on the Arbors were playing the Cardinals.
Johnson tried playing football (people gave him dirty looks when he called it soccer) at a young age. But because he wasn’t able to kick the ball very hard or in any specific direction, he was left to be the goalie. In retrospect it wasn’t so bad. Johnson wasn’t afraid of the ball until one particularly nasty snot kicked it into his face at point-blank range. The rest of the team didn’t blame him for never showing up for another practice or game again. He figured he had better things to do at the age of eight anyway. Like watching cartoons and playing pirates in the backyard. Johnson would pick pirates over football any day of the week.
Laying on his side Johnson flipped through the channels, one by one. Not because there was nothing on, but because he was searching for something. He wasn’t sure exactly what though. Maybe something to use in his novel he wasn’t supposed to be writing? Maybe something to put a stop to the rhythmic throbbing in his lower back? Whatever it was, he didn’t find it when he came around the bend and returned to the Arbors and Cardinals game. His arm dropped pathetically and bounced against the sagging leather cushion he lay on.
To his dismay the television set offered no such information. He felt like a trapped wanderer whose initial intentions were to go on a mission… But in search of the source to tell him what he was supposed to be looking for. Johnson, your head hurts.
It did, a little. Perhaps it was the onset of a headache or maybe the repercussion of falling so aggressively toward the restaurant floor. He hadn’t considered how ruthlessly embarrassing that was. Though, he supposed he really shouldn’t care because he wasn’t awake for it anyway. But coaxing his self-consciousness into submission didn’t beguile the stone in his head that seemed to steadily swell with every humble beat of his pulse.
Groaning lightly to a stand, Johnson yawned heavily and shuffled into the kitchen. He could hear Ratin-Ravi singing softly to himself overhead in the bathroom above a distant roll of thunder. From within the walls came a mottled grinding sound and then the whoosh of rushing water as the shower turned on. Johnson quickly poured himself a glass of water before Ratin-Ravi would have a chance to get in the shower only to be shot with an icy blast from the subjective piping. It took a couple of moments of fumbling around in the medicine cabinet and when Johnson finally laid eyes on the Asprin, someone rapped on the front door.
Three pairs of light footsteps pattered into the foyer. “Don’t answer the door honey,” he called out to Abigail while popping a couple of pills into his mouth. He drank heavily when he heard the door open and forced himself to ignore it.
“Sorry,” he heard Abigail apologize to whomever was there, “I’m not allowed to answer the door.” The heavy front door shut very slowly, slowly enough to squeeze a conversation past it.
“Hi Abigail.”
“Good morning. You’re very pretty today.” Johnson hadn’t a make sea monkeysing clue as to who was on his doorstep.
“Thank you very much, you’re very pretty today too. Is your daddy home?”
His heart lurched when the haunting idea of his publicist checking up on him came to mind. Immediately he slammed the glass on the counter, breaking a hole in their conversation and tore through the kitchen and into the foyer—pajamas and all.
“I’m sorry I’m not feeling well, I think Ravi—” his excuse was cut short when he looked up from Abigail’s smiling face to greet his publicist. But it wasn’t his publicist.
Roxanne Byers stood in the middle of the doorway with a kind but still apologetic smile on her face. John had completely forgotten about her and was nonetheless surprised to see her at his house.

[Abra]

I gave up.



And my board is laughable.