—–?” she asks, and Gather has to take the headphones off to ask her to repeat it.
“What are you listening to?” she asks again.
“Oh… Bic Runga,” he says. “She’s, uh, New Zealander.”
“New Zealander than what?”
Gather’s grinning. “What’s your name?”
“Play along,” she says primly.
“Fine, I say ‘New Zealander than New Guinea…'”
“Did you hear about my new guinea pig? He’s got no nose.”
“How’s he smell?”
“Awful!”
“Yada datda dadatdatdaa,” they finish, shoes clattering on the floor of the bus.
Bic Runga’s still quiet in his ear. “But,” she warns him, “falling’s the easiest part…”
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
In a way, Slick is at a party. It crashes and surges around him, a wall of sound: he trips on rough laughter, tears, fucking, ranged around the spring he raised from red dirt. It fountains wine, and he plunges his face in, ecstatic.
In another way he’s in the dark, clutching a stone. He’s smeared his body with resin of orchids to hide his scent, and around him the life of the selva d’oro seethes and thunders.
Slick understands now. He’s Oenopion, wine-bringer: Oenopion, who understood revenge. Oenopion, who took for his price the eyes of the world’s greatest hunter.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Lens of Stars picked his stage name at eleven, before he’d cut his fingers on strings, huddled in the library corner with a Popular Science. The article was perhaps a bit heavier on the pop than the sci, but it communicated its conceit: that space bends around massive objects, and that the degree to which one sun occludes another can be used to magnify the latter’s light.
Everybody assumes he came up with this while high, and indeed he can’t find that back issue now. No point protesting. His name is a talisman, a telescope, obscuring and focusing the ancient past.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Graham has been putting up with people misguessing her gender for fifty-three years and so, when Clownwise and Fiddleshins confuse her Lebowski-style for a wealthy mark, she plays along just long enough to ruin their scheme out of pique. They go to a special jail for people who call themselves things like “Clownwise” and “Fiddleshins.” Her reward is an irritable cat.
Paroled, they gun for her, and end up caught again within twenty-four hours.
“How’d you know we were coming?” whines Fiddleshins from the back of a special police car.
“Because I’ve read a damn book,” says Graham.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
In his younger days the Eagle of Glern Ably liked to brag about how high his crag was (very high) and how he could dive from it (very fast) and how skilled he was with knucklebones (not very skilled at all). Came a time he lost one roll too many to the Salmon of Lwyn Lwyw.
“I’ve nought to pay you for a forfeit,” grumbled the Eagle of Glern Ably. “Shall I peck you down a star?”
“Actually,” said the Salmon, “I’ve got something I’d like to trade you, friend.”
And that’s why there are too many Ws in Gwern Abwy.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
“We have to get to the airport,” says Com, “or someone I can’t communicate with might get on an airplane.”
“And leave?” says Rom.
“Almost definitely.”
Before he finishes the last word there’s carbonized tire tread on the ramp out of the downtown garage. “Play playlist ‘excited music with no words,'” Rom orders the car as they accelerate. Earlier he was playing music with words, but not now. This is too important.
But then, they come face to face with the impossible: expected traffic patterns.
“Have you tried calling her, or–” says Rom, inching forward.
“Telephones do not exist,” says Com.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Zoltan Thule has a completely awesome name that somehow always makes everyone think she has a lisp.
“It’s a name out of antiquity,” she insists, lightning crackling around her power gauntlet. “On maps it signified the region too far north to be charted! It symbolizes how I gained my power in a quest that took me deep into the ice of–”
“Uh huh,” nods the DMV lady. “And is that S-U-L-E or is it spelled like the city in Korea?”
Eventually she just gets the stupid license with the name spelled wrong. Reindeer bouncers never check ID anyway.
Friday, November 28, 2003
After a while it’s like she can see them wash each other away: sucking cold when the doors open, sharp heat when they close. This happens every two to five minutes, and she’s grown to like the variety.
It’s like this every winter for five winters now, every day but Wednesday (the bus runs even on Christmas). It’s weathering her face. At night she can almost see the tiny spread of her new laugh lines.
Vanetta doesn’t get desperate with lotion, doesn’t buy hydroxy cremes. Let her face find age: let her reduce, crease, dessicate, leave a happy old-apple shrunken head.
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
“It was getting old,” he says, and takes another bite of bamboo salad, “seeing the same faces, you know? I mean, studding was fun, flying all over the world, but there’s like… ten females out there. They’re not all centerfolds. And half of them are my cousins!”
June’s still staring. “When–how…? They just let you go?”
“Had to, once I learned to talk,” he laughs.
“That’s amazing.” She’s following again the pattern of white on his cheeks, the way it draws her back to those beautiful black eyes…
Ling-Ling smiles, and puts his paw on her hand.
It feels nice.
Thursday, December 4, 2003
What would it sound like, if it spoke? “Nasal” makes her think of Gilbert Godfrey, Ad-Roc maybe, but that’s too high. It’d have to be lower, more guttural, lugubrious. Nicolas Cage? Why does that sound right? She pictures it opposite Cher, how the morality would play out: she’s hollow inside! It’s disgusting outside! See–
Maria’s dizzy for a moment when she realizes she’s coming up with instant crap plots for a movie starring… whatever it’d be, all the snot in her head right now if it took on a life of its own. She has got to get out of LA.