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zepskies · 4 months ago

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BETWEEN THE CITY & THE STARS - Part 5

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: In the fall of 1945, Dean is having a difficult time assimilating back into civilian life after the War. He’s visiting his brother Sam in New York City, where he’s beginning to build up his law firm. At two minutes to closing time, you interrupt their evening to solicit a solicitor. Your request? You need help in order to divorce your husband.

AN: Ready for an angsty-fun filled finale? 😘💖

Jacklesverse Bingo24 Prompt: Historical Epic

Song Inspo: “The Very Thought of You” by Tony Bennett

Word Count: 6.6K

Tags/Warnings: 18+ only. Angst, tense situations, protective Dean, hurt/comfort, fluff, and spice.~

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Part 5: Dried Ink

Dean slammed the payphone back on the hook in frustration. He’d tried calling twice from the train station and couldn’t get you at home. It was getting late in the evening and he knew you were off work already. Where the hell did you go?

“She could’ve packed up and left him already,” Sam said. “I gave her the number of a decent hotel I know over in the Village.”

Dean reluctantly stepped aside for the next person waiting to use the phone. The sound of his train clicking by fast on the tracks echoed in the station. A gust of wind shoved at the brothers' backs, ruffling their long coats, as well as Sam's hair.

“You think she did it that quick?” Dean asked.

“One way to find out,” Sam said. “Come on. I’ve got my car waiting.”

It was so very strange to watch the bellman bring your suitcases inside your new room. You’d only ever stayed in a hotel once, for your honeymoon in Philadelphia. Michael took you to the Walnut Street Theater there, and among other things, to see the Liberty Bell. It had reminded both of you about the true cost of freedom.

You let that thought slip away from you with a shake of your head as you started unpacking, hesitantly at first. It almost didn’t feel real.

Fortunately, after sampling from a bottle of scotch you’d found under Michael’s side of the bed (and slipped into your suitcase), you began to settle into the idea. You took a break from hanging up your dresses in the closet to peer out the window to the narrow, busy streets below the fifth floor. Everything looked so small down there, so far away. In time, maybe the heaviness in your heart would feel that far away too.

Except the loud, insistent knock on the door broke you out of your thoughts. Straightening up with a frown, you set down your glass and went over to the door. It could be Housekeeping coming up to bring you the fresh towels you asked for. The ones that had been laid out in the bathroom smelled musty.

You opened the door to a tall frame taking up room in the doorway. It was Michael, standing there disheveled and steaming mad. He held your letter crumpled in his left hand.

“Michael, what—what’re you doing here?” you gasped and stepped back. He followed you inside the room and slammed it shut. He looked around at your open suitcases in disbelief, then finally at you.

“What’s this supposed to mean, huh?” he demanded to know. He shook the flimsy piece of paper at you. “I come home with flowers, two tickets to see a show, ready to take my wife out to dinner, only to find the apartment half empty. Not to mention a letter that…frankly, cut me to down to the core.”

His anger lessened then, turning into dismay; the kind that you never would have expected to see in his eyes. Not after how he’d been acting for the past few months. He came closer and grabbed hold of you by the shoulders. When you tensed and expelled a shaky breath, he blinked in surprise.

“Darling, are you…you scared of me or something?” he asked incredulously. “I know I’ve been working late, not coming home when I say I will sometimes, but have I ever raised a hand to you? Not even once, right?”

You drew enough courage to meet his eyes, so blue, for once so earnest. It made you sick. Because the man he was when he was sober was more like the one you married. Only, you felt the true version of him was more akin to a sleeping dragon, lying in wait to be provoked.

“Neither of us have to lie anymore and pretend this is a marriage. At least, not one worth saving,” you said. “I know, Michael. I know about Dolores…or should I say, Joanna.”

Michael paused. His head cocked as disbelief crossed his features. He stared down at you almost without blinking.

“Did you know her real name was Joanna Johnson?” you asked. “Ring any bells with Brady Johnson, the man you’ve been paying to keep her company?”

Michael frowned. “He’s her brother. He pays her bills—”

“No,” you shook your head. “Look in the folder sitting on the coffee table there.”

You gestured over to it with a nod of your head. Michael was drawn to the path of your gaze. When his morbid curiosity was too much, he finally let go of you to investigate the folder in question. You released a subtle sigh of relief. You began drifting over behind the couch and closer to the landline phone. It rested on a nearby accent table.

Meanwhile, Michael sorted through the contents of the folder and all the information Sam had gathered for you. He’d made copies of all the evidence for your personal records, including the photos he took of Michael and Dolores.

“Her maiden name is Joanna Beth Harvell,” you revealed. “Brady Johnson isn’t her brother, Michael. You’ve been paying to sleep with another man’s wife.”

No one short of Clark Gable could fake the jolt of shock that crossed Michael’s face. You saw the truth of it in his eyes when he glanced up at you.

“I don’t know why it should bother you, seeing as you don’t seem to care much about wedding vows,” you couldn’t help but snark. You were no longer all that sad though. Somehow, that pitiful look on his face made you feel sorry for him.

Michael seemed to have swallowed his tongue. For a while, he couldn’t dislodge it from the roof of his mouth to speak. But when he did, it wasn’t with anything good to say.

“How did you get all this?” he asked.

Your spine stiffened. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over, Michael. I can’t do this anymore. You should be getting the divorce papers served to you by the morning—”

Your words were cut off when he rounded the corner of the couch, grabbing you by the arms again. This time, his grip was much firmer and made you gasp.

“What the hell is going on? Have you been spying on me?!” he raised his voice to new heights, shaking you once by your shoulders. “How long have you been planning to leave me?”

The words became choked in your throat along with your fear—one that paralyzed you, and made you feel sick with yourself, small and weak.

The door bursting open again startled you both, but it was Michael who grunted when he was heaved off of you by his shirt and waistcoat.

You stumbled and braced yourself against the back of the couch, but your widened eyes fell on the one man you never thought you’d see again.

“Dean,” you breathed.

He spared you a look of concern through his anger, but Michael soon commanded his attention by trying to break his hold. Dean reeled back his arm and delivered a solid punch that knocked the other man into the wall. Michael leaned heavily against it to keep himself upright, and he had to blink a few spots out of his eyes, not only grimacing at the ache in his cheek. That one blow had rattled through his skull, disturbing old injuries. He glared over at Dean.

“Who the hell are you?” Michael shouted. His shock only increased when he noticed Sam Winchester shutting the hotel room door behind him. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m her lawyer, Mr. Milligan, and you’re hereby served,” Sam said.

He strode forward with a packet of papers. Michael took a purposeful step towards him, but Dean shoved Michael back against the wall. It allowed Sam to place the packet in Michael’s disbelieving hand.

Dean went over to you then, giving you a meaningful once-over as you held yourself. He softened when he saw the tears in your eyes.

“You all right?” he said quietly, laying a hand on the small of your back. You still couldn’t quite speak, but you nodded at him gratefully, tucking a wily strand of hair behind your ear.

Michael took notice of it once he peeled his eyes from the divorce papers, and up at you and Dean. Michael’s lips pursed as his posture became even more tense and irate.

“I’m not signing this,” he said, tossing the folder onto the coffee table beside the evidence of his infidelity. He met your wary gaze. “Look, I’m not saying I’ve been a perfect husband, but you’re my wife. That still means something to me. We can…we can still work this out.”

Against your will, hot tears burned in your eyes, and your mouth trembled. The men watched you closely.

You shook your head.

“No. We can’t,” you said. “You’re not the man I thought I married.”

In those blue eyes, you thought you saw the shine of a breaking heart. But all too quickly, it turned into anger and denial. Michael meant to cross the narrow distance between you with a threat on his mind and tight coiling of his entire frame. Dean’s hand slid from your back as he stepped in between, fisting a hand in the other man’s dress shirt and pressing there hard.

“You take your hands off me before I tear you apart,” Michael hissed.

Dean’s face was full of cold fire, with a threat thinly veiled underneath. “Lay another hand on her, and I’ll break every bone you got left.”

“Dean,” you gasped, reaching out for him. His backward glance at you warned you to stay where you were.

Michael became even more incensed. Again, he was noticing the familiarity between you and this man invading his space, threatening him, and standing between him and his wife. Before he could open his mouth to protest, Sam finally spoke up again.

“If you don’t take that file and leave now, peacefully, then this isn’t the only one of your affairs that’s going to come to light,” Sam said.

Michael hesitated. He glanced over at Sam with an angry raise of his brow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know very well what it means,” Sam replied. He picked up the folder of evidence he gave you and slipped out a few documents that highlighted an audit of Milligan Meats.

“How does a family business stay so incredibly lucrative during one of the worst times for meat production since the Depression?” Sam wondered aloud. “Maybe it has something to do with those connections you made in Philadelphia, greasing hands like Vondich, from Pittsburg. Or accepting kickbacks from the Torelli family to stock their restaurants with higher quality beef. Who knew that your father had deep, shall we say intimate ties, to one of the biggest mafia families in New York City?”

Once Sam showed the numbers and records, written in Michael’s own painstaking hand, your husband’s face went ashen.

“How did you get this?” he said. Then, as it dawned on him, he looked over at you in betrayal. You hadn’t known about the Torellis, but Sam had been able to sort the last five years of audits for himself, thanks to your investigation of Michael’s office.

“I did my own digging, Mr. Milligan,” Sam said, earning back his attention. “Your wife’s only part in this was asking for my help in securing her divorce. As you can see, I’m very thorough. And these aren’t my only copies of this information. I’m fully prepared to take it to the authorities, today.”

His lie was to protect you, just as much as Dean physically putting himself between you and Michael was. You didn’t know if Michael entirely bought the lie, but eventually, his shoulders sagged in defeat.

He grabbed the papers from Sam’s hand, pivoted on his heel, and turned to leave. However, Michael stopped at the doorway to look back at you.

“This is really what you want?” he asked.

You nodded. “You know it is.”

With that confirmation, Michael took his heavy heart with him when he left.

Sam and Dean helped you repack your things. Neither of them trusted Michael to leave you alone now that he knew where you were. You didn’t want to make such a fuss, but they insisted on helping to put you up at a different hotel across town.

Sam took half of your belongings in his car, where he also had Dean’s one and only suitcase. Dean loaded the rest of your luggage in a taxicab and sat beside you, mostly staring out the window while he smoked. During the ride, you couldn’t help but glance at him every so often. You noted his profile, handsome as always, except now you couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking.

“Dean,” you said quietly. It earned you his attention, as his eyes roamed over you from your familiar beige jacket to your favorite burgundy lipstick.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I am,” you nodded, giving him a small smile. “Thank you.”

You tried to convey deeper things with your words, and you thought Dean read your meaning. He hesitated for a moment, but he took up your hand and pressed a kiss to your fingers.

“Sam’s gonna keep watching out for you, okay? You don’t have to worry about anything,” he said.

Your smile fell. “You’re still going back to Kansas?”

Dean held your gaze for a long moment, and let out a breath through his nose.

“Nothing’s changed, sweetheart. I’m still a man with a lot to make of himself, and you’re still a married woman, even without the ring,” he said, gesturing to your left hand held in his. “It’s not the right time for us…and I’m not asking you to wait for me to get my act together. It’s not fair to you.”

You were quiet for a while. The cab’s tires continued rolling over bits of gravel in the street, the honking horns and other pocketed sounds of the city falling into a background symphony. You glanced up at Dean, meeting his eyes once more.

“I don’t regret anything,” you told him, squeezing his hand. “I could never.”

The corner of his lips quirked upwards. “Me either, baby. Not for all the world.”

He held your hand until the taxi stopped in front of the hotel. Dean leaned over to open the door. He helped you out of the car, but there, he let you go.

You supposed you’d have to be strong enough to walk alone this time.

March 1946

Four months later, it was official.

Oh, Michael sure made it difficult. Sam did make a point to keep an eye on you though. He even hired a client and friend, Benny Lafitte, to accompany you to and from work every day. The burly man was an intimidating presence, but he was kind and respectful. He made you feel safer, especially in the evenings when he kept watch of your apartment for a while, sat out front in his car.

Michael was tenacious. He likely used his connections through town, however nefarious they might be, to find out where you were staying again. He continued to show up outside your hotel room.

Nonetheless, when he sat up against your door all night and realized that you wouldn’t budge, the anger finally drained out of Michael. The exhaustion and guilt set in, perhaps not for the first time.

Then, he drunkenly apologized through the closed door, not knowing you were leaning in on the other side of it. It wasn’t the kind of apology that meant anything, you thought, but the kind that meant to let him save face in your eyes, to persuade you into softening.

You didn’t soften, even though he tried everything to get you to reconsider. He tried gentle words and grandiose gestures, even so far as getting down on his knees outside the door and begging—something you’d never seen him do, not once. Part of you wanted to open the door just an inch if it allowed you to see that sight.

Your tears came, but not because your heart was easing up to him. Your heart was breaking again, knowing this was the end.

He tried reminding you of how difficult it would be for you afterwards, how it might affect your family, your job, everyone’s perception of you. More importantly to him, it would affect how people saw him, a man divorced after barely a year.

Somehow, you found the strength to speak to him slowly from inside the door.

“It’s already done, Michael. And so am I,” you said. “After I saw you and Dolores together with my own eyes, I…I was intimate with another man. I didn’t do it to hurt you, but I still did it.”

His silence was deafening. Not being able to see him actually made this easier though. You sighed.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t go back to us,” you said, “because that would be a lie.”

You couldn’t see it, but his face tightened as angry tears filled his eyes. He felt the weight of his decisions like never before, along with a pulsing, phantom pain in his skull that alcohol could no longer dull. Dimly, he remembered the man he used to be, before. He remembered having a shred of honor to his name, even before he married you. And he did that because he’d loved you. He was sure that he had, somehow…

“I am sorry, darling,” he croaked. “You have to know…”

You nodded, taking a breath to try and steady yourself.

“I know,” you realized. As much as he was able to be, he was sorry.

He picked himself up from outside your door and walked away. He never returned after that.

In those four months, you resolved to move back to Sioux Falls. New York had become your home in the past year and a half you’d lived here, but it wasn’t who you were. You wanted a quieter life. A more peaceful life.

You initially agreed to move to the city with Michael because you had wanted to please him, and make his transition back to civilian life easier in his familiar surroundings. You thought the two of you were building a life together.

New York City was still a heartbeat of a world, but it was no longer in your heart.

Now, you were finishing up on packing your things at the hotel. You left for South Dakota tomorrow, and you already sent your last payment to Sam Winchester a few days ago, along with a handwritten letter thanking him for his help. You felt badly for not going to visit his office in person, but it would be too hard. You would be too tempted to ask about his brother.

Dean.

Just the thought of his name made your heart constrict. You weren’t sure if it was only with pain, though you hoped he was doing well. You tried to remember that you had known him for barely a week. Your mind and your heart shouldn't be so taken up with him.

And yet.

He had seen you at your lowest, belly-to-the-ground low. He had brushed away your tears and hadn’t tried to flatter you with pretty words. He’d made you feel better with simple, raw honesty.

He gave you a window into his past, even though a soldier like him wouldn’t easily pry himself open for anyone, short of his own brother, you suspected. So you’d come to realize, whenever the memory of him greeted you after that day in the park, that he’d given you something special. Perhaps the best night of your life.

Your fingers paused on the brass doorknob to what had been your bedroom for the past few months. It was a modest one, complete with a kitchen and a small two-seater sofa.

Hotels were expensive, but your parents had been kind enough to send you some money to help you. They’d been dismayed to learn of the reasons behind your divorce, of course. They both had been against it at first, but when they heard your voice over the phone, along with the full story, they finally agreed to support you in what way they could, especially by welcoming you back home.

You were looking forward to seeing them. It had only been a couple of months since they’d come to the city for Christmas, but you were ready to go home to some familiarity, and to your family’s support.

You shook your head to get yourself unstuck from all of that. You straightened the wrinkles out of your long skirt and adjusted the collar of your blouse. You had just come home from your last day of work not too long ago, so you supposed you would take a bath and get changed into something more comfortable before you finished packing. Your train left tomorrow, early in the morning.

You were about to head into the bathroom when you heard a knock at the door. Frowning, you wondered who it could be. If it was Michael again, you were not opening the door, and you’d call the police for good measure if he stuck around. You were done entertaining him in every sense of the word.

You went to the door and looked into the peephole. Your brows furrowed. You unlatched all three locks on the door and opened it to the room service maid.

“Hi, Bridget, how are you?” you greeted her.

“Oh, I’m doing well, ma’am. Sorry, I’m a bit behind today, but I’m here to clean the room.”

“Oh, well, now isn’t really a good time,” you said. You had duffel bags and suitcases open, with your clothes, a curling iron, and other things thrown about. Not to mention, you had a leftover sandwich sitting half-eaten on the dining table with a nearly empty bag of chips.

“I’m afraid I can’t come back later,” said Bridget. She tended to talk with her hands, made more interesting by the fact that she held a broom with one hand, and pulled her cleaning cart with the other. “It’ll be too late, and then you’ll be asleep!”

“Look, I’ll just clean tonight, and you can come back tomorrow after I leave. How does that sound?” you suggested.

“All right, if that’s how you want it,” Bridget said with a shrug. She threw her broom on the cart and started pushing it down the hall. She still called back to you over her shoulder, “Goodnight, ma’am! Safe travels for your trip home.”

You shook your head with a weary smile. “Thank you. Goodnight!”

You closed the door behind you and reset all the locks in place. Releasing a heavy sigh, you supposed you should get back to packing. You turned to do just that, when there came another knock on the door. This time it was a heavier sound.

“For God’s sake. What is it now?” you groused.

You went back to look into the peephole. This time, your mouth fell open in a gasp. You undid all the locks again with shaking hands, and you opened the door. There stood Dean Winchester.

He looked nice. Dapper really, wearing a dark blue suit and tie over a crisp white shirt and blue waistcoat underneath. His hair was combed and gelled and parted to the right, and he smelled faintly of a woodsy cologne.

He also looked just as stricken to see you. His eyes were as green as you remembered, and they took in your form from head to toe. They returned to your face, softening slightly, and he smiled.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

God, his voice. It threatened to make you weak.

You shook your head and managed to smile back at him. “What’re you doing here?”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s some welcome.”

“You know what I mean.” You reached out for him, and he took your hand, raising the back of it to his lips in a kiss. All the while, his eyes never left you. Your face flushed hotly, your heartbeat leaping in and out of rhythm.

“I’m here to see you,” he said, matter of factly. As if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Your mouth ran dry. It was difficult to form words, but somehow you managed it.

“Would…would you like to come in then?” you offered.

“I’d like nothing more,” he replied.

The depths in his words made a tingle run down your spine, though you tried to hide your reaction to it. You let him in and shut the door behind you both.

“So you’re headed home, huh?” he asked. He was sitting next to you on the couch with a soda you procured for him, and a cigarette in hand, yet to be lit.

“Did Sam tell you?” you asked.

Dean nodded, smiling ruefully. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

You ducked your head, a bit embarrassed. He tossed his unlit cigarette on the coffee table and tucked a finger under your chin. He raised your head until you met his eyes.

“There she is,” he said softly.

You sucked in a breath laden with emotion. Tears welled up in your eyes.

“Why are you here, Dean?”

“I think you know,” he said, his thumb brushing your cheek.

“I think you need to say it,” you replied, daring him with the directness of your gaze. His hand fell away from your chin, just to cup your cheek as he moved closer. You grabbed onto his arm in reflex.

“I told you, I had to see you,” he admitted.

“Why? Why now?” you asked. “After what you said last time… For goodness’ sake, Dean. Why wait until I’m about to leave?”

“Because,” Dean said. He took a subtle breath, making himself relax. “Because I had to sort myself out, and I had to wait until the ink dried on those damn divorce papers. Because if I’d come any sooner, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.”

Hope dared to rise high in your throat. Your eyes flit over his face, and finally met his.

“From what?” you whispered.

Dean tilted his head to consider it. He bit into his lip, and then, he made a choice.

He kissed you with abandon. He kept kissing you, stealing your breath, finding new angles to devour you with. He robbed you of any coherent thought in your head the moment his tongue breached your lips to curl against yours. It was all you could do to keep up with him, but you grabbed onto his jacket and made indents in the fabric with your nails. His hands moved down your body to squeeze your waist, pulling you flush against him. You moaned into his mouth.

“Dean,” you said, half on a gasp, half on a whimper.

He managed to slow down for a moment. His hand came up to pet your hair.

“No matter what the hell I do, I’m selfish. I just…I can’t let you go,” he said, with furrowed brows.

You shook your head in dismay. “You didn’t need to, you know. I wouldn’t have let you take me home that night if I didn’t think you were a good man…and I certainly wouldn’t have invited you in.”

Your lips tugged at a smile, making Dean smirk as well. That memory had stayed with him too, usually on long nights alone in his house. He tried to remember the sweet smell of your perfume, the feeling of your soft skin, the sound of your pretty moans in his ear. Even now, the thought stirred the well of arousal inside him.

But also, there were other things he missed, like the sight of your smile, your sweeter voice, somehow gentle and strong all at once. He shook his head, thumbing at your cheek.

“The truth is, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since the day I met you,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that means I love you.”

Your eyes blinked wide at him in shock. His face was steady and even, but his amusement was starting to peek through the longer he looked at you.

“Pretty sure?” you asked breathlessly.

“Well, I’m willing to be more definitive on the subject if you are,” he teased.

You fought a smile, but you couldn’t quite help it. Still, doubt began to creep in from behind.

“I want to believe you,” you said quietly. “But part of me is afraid that these are all just pretty words. If I let another man—”

“I’m not another man,” Dean said. His tone was firm, but also imploring, willing you to hear him. He gave your waist a gentle squeeze. “I’m me and you’re you. It’s not about Michael, or anyone else right now but us. And you’ve gotta know…sweetheart, you’ve gotta know that I’m not him.”

You tried steadying yourself with a breath. Your watery gaze cut away from Dean, but he wouldn’t let you hide. He gently brought you back, once again guiding your chin. He swept the lone tear from your cheek.

“Please, just tell me the honest truth. Tell me how you feel about us, and I promise, I won’t take it for granted,” he said. He knew he was practically begging, sounding almost needy and weak, but he couldn’t walk away from you again. Not until he knew for sure what you could want from him…what you could want with him.

The seconds of waiting for your answer were more agonizing than the long hours he spent traveling back to New York.

Until finally, you spared him. You shook your head and raised a hand to caress his cheek, your thumb brushing over his plush lower lip.

“After you left, I thought about you every morning when I woke up. And I prayed for you every night before I went to sleep,” you said. “I’m pretty sure that means I love you too.”

Dean smiled. It was a soft, boyish smile that seemed too young for his face. You loved him all the more for it.

He leaned in…but he hesitated, stopping just shy of your lips.

“Look, I still don’t know if I can be the man you need,” he said. He looked into your eyes. “But I can promise to try, every day, and for the rest of our lives.”

Hot tears once again stung in your eyes, threatening to blur your vision.

“That’s all I could ask for, Dean,” you replied. “I’ll try for you too.”

He smiled slightly, holding you a little closer by your waist.

“Good, because my shoulder still hurts sometimes. Gonna need you to work another miracle or two.”

You laughed and nodded, your hand sliding back up his arm to rub the old injury in his shoulder.

“My specialty,” you teased.

His smile dimmed then, becoming a touch serious, and even rueful.

“And, uh…I don’t sleep so well at times, either,” he said.

You sobered as well. “Me too,” you said. Your lips hinted at a smile again. “But we can keep each other company.”

Dean read the thread of suggestion in your eyes, despite the hint of shyness. His smile began to perk up again.

“I can also be kind of stubborn,” he admitted.

Amused, you tilted your head and ran a gentle hand over his chest. Was he giving you every reason you might say no to him?

“Well, I’m sure I can find a way to soften you up,” you said.

Chuckling, Dean took your hand and pressed a kiss into your palm. “Oh, I got no doubts about that, sweetheart.”

He rested your hand back on his chest and thought for a moment more. You just waited for him, patiently stroking his hand with your thumb. You had time to wait.

“You know, I occasionally like to cook too,” he said, with something of an embarrassed chuckle.

Your smile brightened with interest. “Really? Well,” you said, slipping your hand out of his and winding your arms around his neck. “We can take turns feeding each other then.”

Dean really liked the way your mind worked. His hands splayed along your lower back and brought you more flush against his chest. Your face was mere inches from his, tilted up to him in waiting.

Again, he stopped short of kissing you.

“Ah, there’s probably a lot more you should know, but this one’s kind of a big one,” Dean said. That serious tone crept back up in his voice. “I’ve got a plan to make money. It’s not a sure-fire thing, but it’s an honest one. And even if it doesn’t work, I’ll just try something else. I’ll do whatever it takes to take care of you. You don’t gotta worry about anything, okay?”

You smiled at his earnestness. What surprised you most of all was that you believed him. Every word. Because you could see it in the deep green of his eyes. If you trusted him, he wouldn’t let you down. Or at least, he would try his hardest. Try really was all you could ask for.

“Then I’ll take care of you too,” you nodded, stroking his cheek.

Dean’s smile rang true as well.

He finally kissed you again, trapping you thereafter against the sofa.

You sighed and nuzzled your head in a more comfortable position on Dean’s shoulder. The train bound for South Dakota was travelling full speed ahead, four days after your initially booked ticket. The carriage bumped and jostled you both at times, but you felt nothing but peace.

Dean turned his attention towards you, and he pressed a kiss to your forehead. His fingers entwined with yours in his lap.

“Comfortable?” he asked, both genuine and a little teasing.

“Mhmm,” you nodded. Your eyes closed as you let out a breath. He smiled into your hair.

“So what’s it like in Sioux Falls?” he asked quietly, as to not disturb you too much. He just wanted to keep hearing your voice. He’d missed it. He’d missed you.

“Quieter than the city,” you replied, after a moment to think about it. “Slower, but in some ways nicer. I think you’ll like it more than New York, anyway, and I think my parents will like you too…if they don’t think too much less of me.”

“Why would they think less of you?” Dean asked.

You picked your head up and looked up at him a bit bashfully. You raised up your joined hands, where his mother’s wedding bands now rested on your ring finger.

“For marrying another man they’ve never met, scarcely two minutes after the ink dried, so to speak,” you said, using his words.

Dean chuckled, and he wrapped you up more snugly against him and rubbed your back. If you wanted to get technical, the new marriage license was the most recent “ink” to be penned. Sam had been your witness, of course, and he’d hugged you both afterwards. For Dean, Sam’s hug was tight and bracing.

“I’m happy for you, Dean. I’m always here for you. Anything you need.”

“That’s my line, little brother.”

Dean hadn’t known that the two of you needed to take a blood test just to get hitched, let alone that the license wouldn’t be valid for 72 hours. Though it did give you and Dean the opportunity to put your hotel room to good use for those three days. Call it a honeymoon before the honeymoon.

(In fairness, you’d tried to hold out for decency’s sake, but your resolve dissipated even quicker than Dean’s.)

“Don’t worry, I’ll charm ‘em,” he said with a grin.

You snorted. “Good luck with my father. Be prepared for his grilling. Where do you plan to live? What’re you doing for work?”

“Well, the first one we can talk about. The second one, I’ve already got an idea,” said Dean. “I wanted to wait until I saw you again to decide…but I plan to sell the house in Lawrence.”

Your eyes widened in surprise. “Really? Why?”

You had already been mentally preparing yourself for a move to Kansas after visiting your parents. You never considered that Dean would want to sell his family home.

“For the money. I’m thinking that after all this, you want to stick closer to home, be near your family,” he said. “I’ve got nothing tying me down over there besides the house, so I figure we can use the money to buy one here. With whatever’s left, I could try to start an auto repair shop. Nothing big to start. Just a space big enough for the work. I’m not picky about it. Your uncle could send me the stragglers from his tows, if he’s agreeable to it.”

“After he gets to know you, I don’t see why not. Dean, that’s a great idea and…thank you,” you replied. Your heart was touched that he would sell his family home, just so you could be near your family. You squeezed his hand and blinked past the tears beginning to burn in your eyes.

“Really, you don’t know what it means to me that you’d consider me like that.”

Dean noticed you getting worked up. He stroked the back of your hand with his thumb, though part of him felt a bit bashful.

“It’s not all that special,” he said. You didn’t budge, however.

“Yes, it is,” you said. You leaned up, wordlessly requesting a kiss. Dean obliged you. He kissed you long and slow and tender.

He broke away after a while, just to look over your shoulder. He smiled. Then he leaned forward, careful to keep you secure in his arms as he locked the door.

“What’re you up to?” you asked in amusement, despite the fire churning inside you.

“It’s a long way to the Midwest, sweetheart. I’m taking advantage of it,” he said. “What do you say?”

A knowing smile began to tug at your lips. “Hmm, depends on what you want to do.”

Dean shifted you onto his lap. Smirking at your small sound of surprise, he made a show of undoing every button that laced down the front of your dress with slow precision. Your breathing shallowed as you watched his nimble hand go one by one.

“I plan to take my time,” he said. “I plan to make us both glad this train is loud enough to drown out just about anything.”

He laid a kiss just above your neckline. The more buttons he loosened, the more bare skin he had to trail his affections, like on the tops of your breasts, and another kiss in between them. Uttering a soft sigh, you held him to you by his hair and threaded your fingers through the brown strands. His other hand squeezed your bottom, earning a stifled giggle from you.

“I plan to map out every part of you, all over again,” he said, “until I can see it all with my eyes closed. Until we’re both sweaty and satisfied.”

He raised his head just to mark a biting, claiming kiss on your throat, making your breath hitch.

“That okay with you, baby?” he asked again.

You felt his growing smile against your skin. You tightened a hand in his hair in retaliation. It was a scandalous proposal, not to mention risky. You two could be booted off the train, for heaven’s sake…

Your breaths were shallow as he slipped a hand under the collar of your blouse, even under the bra to palm at your breast.

“You better not stop, Sergeant,” you whispered.

When he chuckled, you felt it deep in your chest.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, shortly before he claimed your lips again.

The train rode on.

AN: I promised a happy ending, didn't I? 😉✨ What did you think of the "end" of Michael, as well as how she and Dean worked things out? I absolutely loved working on this series and this AU world. Maybe I'll do another '40s AU in the future! 💖

But until then, I have lots of fun things coming up! You'll hear about the next story soon. 😘

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kitera-matar · 5 years ago

Text

Inktober Day 10 - Hope.

So a quick aside - Anyone who knows me knows I have issues with time and completing tasks. Therefore Inktober has become a major mental, physical, and emotional hurdle for me to prove to myself. I started out by saying I just wanted to get ONE more than last year. And this marks that spot. <3 I have 10 drawings I am proud of also (unlike last year where I really only liked 4 of them). *^_^* I will most likely stop on Oct 31 wherever I am in the prompt list because... well I’m exhausted quite frankly. This on top of the usual Oct insanity at work and the mill - well let’s just say I’m excited for November. But I can’t thank you all enough for all the kind words and encouragements - they have meant so much to me!!!

Ok - so HOPE. We can all agree 2020 has been a crappy year. It has taken our jobs, our health, and our communities away from us. But it has given me back dancing. That has been my hope this year. I no longer have the excuse of well there is SOMEWHERE out there I can go dancing - I just don’t know where.. I had to make my own opportunity. So I silent disco as I call it - I listen to music on my headphones and dance around a baseball diamond by myself at 2am and laugh, cry, meditate, see the stars, and re-stabilize myself. This piece is me and where I have found hope in a year of ever increasingly bad news. I draw the layers connecting and dividing me and the world around me. And look like a crazy person. *shrug* But hey I lost 20lbs?

I originally wanted to redo a drawing I did of my heart box years ago. But then decided against it because I love it as is and didn’t want to try and change something that encapsulates a time and place for me. So i redrew it with all the layers. And still wasn't happy with it. So I redrew it again. And I liked it! I also used this as an excuse to play around with masking fluid and walnut ink some more.

2020 has been a terrible year, but I pray you all find some hope to hold onto through these rocky times.

#inktober #inktober2020 #inktoberday10 #hope #silent disco #dancing #walnut ink #watercolors #masking fluid

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rhetoricandlogic · 7 years ago

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The Thought That Counts By K.J. Parker

Issue #250, Special Double-Issue

, April 26, 2018

AUDIO PODCAST

EBOOK

“...wanted me to marry Logo the tanner. He’s got a beautiful home, she said, and you soon get used to the smell. Mother, I said, I don’t want to get used to the smell. I don’t ever want to be the sort of person who doesn’t notice the stink of sheep’s brains. She just looked at me. That’s when I knew I had to leave.”

I decided I didn’t like her mother. Priorities all wrong. Egging her on to marry defenceless tanners when she should have been teaching her not to talk to strange men in stagecoaches. Which raises the incidental question; am I a strange man? I guess, on balance, yes. Decide for yourself.

“So I went home, slung all the stuff I needed into a bag, and here I am, on my way to the big city. My name’s Sinneva, by the way.”

“Constantius,” I lied. “Pleased to meet you.”

Another lie, but she smiled. “Are you a priest?”

Two reasons why a man might be wearing ecclesiastical vestments in a coach on the four-way to Sempa Sacona. One, he’s a priest. Or two, the lock on the vestment cupboard at the Blue Light monastery is so pathetic a blind man could open it with a sprig of damp heather. “Yes,” I said. “Sort of.”

“Are you going to Sempa?”

“Stopping off,” I said. “On my way somewhere else.”

“It’ll be my first time in the big city,” she said, “I’m looking forward to it so much. All my life I’ve wanted to go there. Is it really as wonderful as they say it is?”

“Depends on what you like,” I said.

“I’m going to be an artist,” she said. “Somewhere like Sempa, you can make a living as an artist. I do portraits. I’m not terribly good at it.”

That would explain the bag full of little pottery jars nestling between her feet. I’d sort of looked at them sideways when she first got on the coach. Worth money to somebody, but rather a specialised market. Besides, I’m through with all that sort of thing.

“Funny you should say that,” I said. “I’m interested in paint.”

“Painting.”

“Paint,” I said. “I dabble a bit in alchemy, and I reckon it might be possible to make synthetic blue. Instead of having to grind up ruinously expensive lapis lazulae in a pestle and mortar.” She didn’t say anything, so I went on: “There’s definitely a demand for it. A genuine deep royal blue at a fraction of the price. A man could make a nice little bit of money that way.”

“I’ve never used blue.”

“Too expensive?”

She nodded. “That’s why I started doing portraits, you don’t have to have any sky.”

“There you are, then,” I said. “When I’ve perfected my synthetic blue, you can do portraits of people outdoors. You could corner the market.”

She looked at me. Strange man, she was thinking. At this point, her mother’s awful warning should have leapt into her mind and shut her up like a vault, but no such luck. “People like to be painted in their houses,” she said, “surrounded by all their possessions. It’s the convention. That way, you can see how rich and powerful they are, and what exquisite taste they have. Outdoors, they could be anybody.”

“Ah,” I said gravely. “I see.”

“Not that I want to be constrained by conventions,” she said, looking out of the window. “I want to paint what I really see. Does that make any sense to you?”

“As opposed to what other people see? Or what’s actually there?”

I was starting to get on her nerves. Well; it had taken long enough. “What I see,” she said. “Which may not be the same thing as what you see.”

“Because I’m not particularly observant, and may have missed something.”

“Because I see the world as it could be.”

“Ah.” I pulled a couple of walnuts out of my pocket and cracked them together in my palm. I have very strong hands. “In that case, maybe you should consider religious subjects. The spiritual dimension.”

“Women aren’t allowed to paint icons. You should know that, being a priest.”

“Sort of a priest. And I didn’t specify icons.”

“If it’s a portrait and religious, it’s an icon. So I can’t do those, it’s illegal.”

“I read somewhere,” I said, quoting myself—well, I sometimes read my own books, when all else fails— “that the object of portraiture is to capture the soul of the sitter.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

Thank you, I nearly said. “I reckon you’d have to know a lot about human nature. Do you?”

“Everybody does, don’t they? Like fish know about water.”

And still thirty miles to go until we reached Sempa. But you don’t get to choose your travelling companions on the public coach. Next time, if there’s any justice, I’ll get a couple of rich tallow-chandlers who think they’re good at playing cards for money.

Actually, I was telling the truth about blue paint. I came across the tantalising possibility a few years back, when I was making my living as a fraudulent alchemist, and I dream of the day when I can settle down and do the thing properly, in peace and quiet, not always having to jump out of windows in the middle of the night to avoid creditors, disillusioned investors, or the Watch. It’s a sad thing to say about yourself, but I’m not the most honest, upright citizen you’re ever likely to meet—which Sinneva the would-be portrait painter should’ve noticed at first glance if she was in any way suited to her chosen profession. I won’t tell you my name, because you’d recognise it immediately; and either you’d say, My God, it’s him, or, Oh God, it’s him, depending on the context in which you’ve heard of me. But you will have heard of me. Everybody has.

The reason I’d come to Sempa was to see the Polyglypton brothers. If you know Sempa, you’ll know their stall; it’s under the lime tree in the old Bird Market, and you’ve probably spent far more money there than you care to admit. They have their warehouse and scriptorium (rather a grand name for a long, draughty shed) out back of the stockyards, where the air is always heavy with the stench of blood. You get used to it, so they tell me, but I can’t imagine how.

As I walked there across the Victory Bridge I amused myself with the thought of Sinneva the aspiring artist; suppose she managed to land the job of her dreams, doing the illustrations for the extra-special-deluxe editions (no, not those ones, they don’t let women work on those). She’d turn up for her first day at work, and the smell would hit her like a hammer—a tannery is roses and lavender compared to what the breeze wafts down from the slaughteryards—and someone would grin at her and say, it’s all right, you get used to it. I stopped at the outer gate and splashed a fat blob of attar of violets onto the lapels of my coat. It helped, but not very much.

Sivia and Massimo Polyglypton receive visitors in their office, which is more a sort of hayloft over the warehouse; you climb up a ladder, for crying out loud. I’d never met them before. Sivia is tall and thin, Massimo looks like the sort of man they hire to throw undesirables out of brothels. They told me to sit down and offered me ginger tea.

“We liked it,” Massimo said, “very much. But—”

“But?”

They looked at each other. “I mean, it’s very clever,” Sivia said. “Well argued and very well written. It’s just—”

“What?”

Awkward pause. “I think,” Massimo said, “the word we’re looking for is ‘derivative’.”

Derivative. Good word; not one you’d expect to hear in a loft downwind of an abbatoir. “Derivative of what?”

Massimo pursed his lips. “You’ve read the Metaphysics, obviously.”

The book he mentioned wasn’t called that. I’ve changed the name. Why shouldn’t I? I wrote the damn thing. “Well, yes.”

“And Reflections on the Abyss and Sunrise.”

“Oh yes.”

“That’s what we’re getting at,” Sivia said apologetically. “Frankly, if He’d written this, we’d be all over it like ants on a dead donkey. Coming from you, though—”

“Someone nobody’s ever heard of,” Massimo added.

“It’s a question of authority,” Sivia said. “Credibility. To get away with the sort of thing you’re saying here, you need to be—well, someone like Him. You think all this is very startling and original, but if He says it, obviously there must be something to it. No disrespect, but you don’t carry that weight. You haven’t earned that right to be listened to. It’s not the same.”

Annoying, because the Him they were talking about was, of course, me; universally respected as one of the greatest philosophers of my generation but wanted in all the major jurisdictions for every crime in the book short of actual murder. “I see your point,” I said. “So, you don’t want it.”

They looked at each other. “We didn’t say that.”

“Ah. So what are you saying?”

They said it, and then we haggled a bit, and the upshot was, I settled for thirty angels instead of the seventy-five we’d originally agreed. Annoying, because I needed the money, but thirty angels was twenty-nine angels ninety kreuzer more than I had in the whole world at that time (that’s putting the value of one set of stolen ecclesiastical vestments at ten kreuzer), so I was, of course, pleased to accept.

Not, I reflected as I scrambled back down that ridiculous ladder, that I had much to complain about. Writing the wretched thing had kept me mildly amused through the long dreary months I’d spent holed up in a half-derelict sawmill in the hill country north of Copis City, waiting for the fuss to die down after one of my more misguided indiscretions; the parchment and ink had cost me maybe two kreuzer, so nobody could pretend I wasn’t well ahead of the game. Even so. To be fined forty-five angels for not being me when I really am me is a bit hard. And since being me is such a wretched, troublesome business at the best of times, it sort of rubs salt into the wound, if you see what I mean.

But never mind. There I was in Sempa Secona, a place where there were no outstanding warrants for my arrest and no extradition treaties with either the Eastern or Western empire, with thirty gold angels in my pocket. For once in my life, I could walk down the street without looking for places to run to if I heard someone yell my name. That set me thinking: artificial blue paint. Well, a man has to have a dream. The fact that mine is so utterly prosaic is neither here nor there.

I hired a shed not far from the bone mills, for thirty kreuzer a week. One unfortunate by-product of alchemy is the smell (you get used to it, but...); my neighbours at the bone works would be in no position to get stroppy about a few noxious fumes, except on the grounds of breach of monopoly. I managed to buy the glassware ridiculously cheap from someone’s gullible widow, with enough left over to keep me in stale bread and no-longer-perfectly-fresh salt fish for several months, by which time I was absolutely certain I’d have cracked the last few remaining problems. A life of honest endeavour; well, why not? Everyone ought to try it at least once before he dies.

I won’t bore you with the results of my researches. Suffice it to say, I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that making artificial blue paint using certain specific ingredients and a certain method, which I won’t specify here, is absolutely impossible. As a scientist, I was pleased to have added to the sum of human knowledge. As a moral philosopher, I was able to conclude that living a pure and upright life doesn’t of itself lead to happiness or even peace of mind. The day before the money finally ran out, I did come across a tantalising possibility which, one of these days, I really must get around to following up, since it might just be the missing ingredient that would make all the difference; but of course I was in no position to do anything about it at that time, so I sold the glassware for even less than I paid for it and wandered into the centre of town, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

A number of rather unpleasant things have happened to me over the years in and around law courts, so I really can’t tell you what possessed me to drift across Haymarket and down the Snailshell into the Forum of Justice. But I did, and sure enough, it being a week-day in Middle Term, the court was sitting. I guess the novelty of the situation—a court of law in session, and me not being the unwilling centre of attention—piqued my interest; anyhow, I sat down on an empty seat in the back row, next to couple of fat rich women eating apples, to watch the show. It was a fairly slow day, interlocutories in disputes over shipping manifests and bills of lading, and I was just about to leave when the magistrate banged his little hammer and four grim-looking gaolers led out, in chains, my annoying young friend from the coach; yes, her, the would-be portrait artist.

Four gaolers; in my prime I only ever merited three, and I was pretty hot stuff, though I do say so myself. True, she was taller than average and no willow-wand, but four kettlehats, for crying out loud. What could she possibly have done? And, come to that, was it something so awful that the authorities might be interested in her known associates? I kept perfectly still and started paying attention.

It was a simple short-form arraignment, rather than the actual trial. The prisoner Sinneva was accused of treason, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm. She had entered a plea of Not Guilty, and the prosecutor was asking the magistrates to commit her for immediate trial.

The magistrate asked if the prisoner had a lawyer. The prosecutor didn’t actually grin; none of the accredited public defenders were prepared to represent her. And therefore -

Remind me, when I’ve got five minutes, to have my legs cut off. They’ve come in useful over the years—running away, they’re really good at that—but on this occasion they got me into serious trouble, and I can’t risk them doing it again. They stood me up—I swear, I had nothing to do with it—and there I was, on my feet and listening in horror to my own voice, asking permission to approach the bench.

The magistrate looked at me, took in the ecclesiastical gown, and nodded. So, feeling incredibly bewildered and stupid, I waddled slowly down the main aisle until I was practically nose to nose with the magistrate, a small, red-faced man with thick wavy white hair. I cleared my throat. “This woman,” I said, “has no representation.”

“That’s right.”

“On a capital charge.”

He peered at me. “I don’t know you,” he said.

“I’m from out of town. Is this how you do things in Sempa?”

He sniggered. “No, not in the normal course of things. Are you a lawyer?”

“Yes,” I said—truthfully, as it happens; at least, I have four degrees in civil and criminal law, though most of my experience has been on the other side of the fence, so to speak. “Constantius of Beloisa. I have diplomas from the Studium, the Imperial Institute in Mavortis, the Purple Chamber in Scona—”

“Mphm.” He was impressed. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this, trust me.”

I gave him a polite scowl. “I make formal application to defend this prisoner.”

“Don’t you want to know what she’s done?”

“Is alleged to have done. No, not particularly.”

A gentle sigh. “All right, mister Out-of-Town, and on your own head be it. Duly accredited.” He looked at me. “Give your address to the clerk, you’ll be notified.”

I hesitated. “The fee,” I said.

“Ah.” He looked at me again, taking in the frayed cuffs of the robe, the sweatstains inside the collar. “Standard rates, one angel twenty a day. Want me to cross you off the docket?”

“It’s not about the money,” I said.

“Of course not. Dismissed.”

Naturally, I asked around. Information wasn’t hard to come by; it was the scandal of the month. This weird female had blown into town, nobody knew where she’d come from, and set up a stall in the market; your portrait painted, one angel. No takers, naturally; so she started doing portraits for free, and actually they were really rather good; you know how crazy fashions suddenly spring up out of nowhere, suddenly she was the new big thing. You had to have your portrait painted by the little peasant girl, or you were nobody. Soon she had a waiting list long as your arm.

Naturally, the best people wanted to jump the queue, started offering her good money. She refused; one angel, no more, no less. Now an angel is a tidy sum in some contexts; you could buy the farm I was raised on for three angels, including the live and dead stock, the standing crops, and my kid brother. In Sempa, you could live elegantly on one angel for a month, or any-bloody-fashion for a year. But the high class portrait artists, who were suddenly finding themselves with time on their hands ever since Sinneva showed up, routinely charged fifty angels for a cameo, three times that for a regular canvas. This curious reluctance on her part to make out like a bandit had been duly noted as significant, in the light of what followed.

The first case was Governor Scaevola, just back from three years in one of the northern provinces. There’s a saying in revenue circles; the good shepherd shears his sheep, he doesn’t skin them. Scaevola flayed his sheep alive, and was therefore nicely set up for life when he came home. He was one of her first high-class commissions; and three days after his portrait was delivered—he was delighted with it, by all accounts, and so was his wife—they found him in his study late one night, sitting in the dark, not moving at all, staring at the wall.

After that, Senator Juppito, the Friend of the Poor; the Lady Iphianassa, patroness of the arts and Sempra’s leading society hostess; Genseric, the banker; Mediobarzanes, the playwright; Massimo Polyglypton the bookseller (oh dear, I thought, never mind), and half a dozen others—all the same, struck dumb and motionless, empty-eyed and living-dead, soon after the little peasant girl had painted their portraits.

Sempa is a rational, secular sort of place. They repealed their witchcraft laws about seventy years ago, and people only go to Temple to be seen in their new clothes. Be that as it may. There’s only so much weird stuff people can take before they start jumping to conclusions. Poor little Sinneva was arrested and slung in jail, while they tried to figure out what to charge her with.

First, they had a go with administering a noxious substance, arguing that she must have poisoned their drinks. But she always painted her subjects at their houses—she didn’t seem to have a studio or anything like that, and she lived in a nasty little garret over a fishmonger’s, where presumably she was in the process of getting used to the smell when they took her away. They examined her paints and solvents, but all they found was the usual stuff that every artist uses; besides, if it was something she was using that had done the damage, surely she’d have poisoned herself in the process. The debate moved up to the Senate, where Juppito’s mob, the Optimates, tried to ram through a new witchcraft law, applicable retroactively. But the Popular Tendency talked it out of time, simply because it was the Optimates who’d proposed it, and so nothing could be achieved that way. Meanwhile, the families of the victims were howling for something to be done, and the attorney general was up for re-election. He resolved to charge her with treason, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm, on the strict understanding that anyone who defended her would never work in Sempa again, and trusted in Justice to run its ineluctable course.

As accredited counsel for the defence, I had the right to make certain investigations. So there I was, with two kettlehats making me nervous, climbing the stairs to Sinneva’s rotten little lodgings and wishing, really wishing, I’d never got involved.

The kettlehats were along to make sure I didn’t touch anything or interfere with evidence. They had a really quiet morning. It was a tiny little room under the eaves; bed, chair, second-best dress hanging behind the door, plain plank table with half a loaf of stale bread and a pitcher of badly gone-off milk, and a copy of Human, All Too Human open at the bit about the immortality of the soul (which nearly made me smile; I remember writing it, with a murderous hangover and the rain dripping through the roof), and that was it, nothing else whatsoever. Evidentially neutral; no hit list or subversive literature, correspondence with fellow-conspirators, jars of poisonous chemicals; no evidence that the stupid girl had been spending her new-found wealth on anything nice, which is what any normal, innocent person in her circumstances would surely have done. No money, come to that. Her known commissions must have netted her at least forty angels; the rent on the garret was three kreuzer a week—she was robbed, if you ask me—and bread and milk, ten kreuzers a month, tops. Where was the rest of it? In a bank? Or was she sending it home to her poor impoverished parents? Unlikely, I thought, given the terms on which she’d parted from them, but I wasn’t going to tell the prosecutors that. Even so; I felt like I’d been dealt a piss-poor hand with which to defend the stupid child. Served me right, I suppose, for sticking my nose in.

It was what wasn’t there, of course, that interested me. For that, I could see no alternative but to visit my client, something I really didn’t want to do. Also, if the hypothesis I’d formed about five seconds after hearing the facts in the case was true, there was nothing she could tell me that would be any use to me in getting her neck out of the noose. No, the hell with that. I was going to have to wing it, make it up as I went along. So happens I’m good at that—very good indeed, which is how come I’m still alive and writing this. Actually, I told myself, I’d had so little experience with positive favourable evidence (because I’ve always been guilty as charged), probably this wouldn’t be a good time to start trying to learn how to use it. Stick with what you know, is my motto.

I took a deep breath. “Your honour,” I said, “I’ve listened with great interest to the facts in this case, so ably presented by my learned friend. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when he stopped where he did. I was expecting so much more. I was waiting patiently for evidence—hard evidence—connecting my client in any way to the tragic events we’ve just had described to us. Surely, I said to myself, there must be something. But apparently not. My learned friend has just told you that he rests his case. Being a fair-minded man, I would like to give him one last chance to add to what he’s just said. No? Sure? Very well. But please, don’t say I didn’t give you every opportunity.

“Let’s consider the facts. My client, an innocent country girl, comes to this great city to fulfil her lifelong ambition. She is a naturally talented, I may say quite brilliant, artist; entirely self-taught, I might add, she’s never had the benefit of any formal education—unless my learned friend would care to tell us about it, the schools she’s studied at, the masters she’s been apprenticed to. No? Are you absolutely sure? Very well. No formal education whatsoever. She grew up milking cows, churning butter, sweeping floors, and dreaming of a better life.

“After only a week or so in this uniquely cultured and appreciative city, her talents were recognised. Despite her disadvantages of class and gender, this plucky and determined young woman starts to make a name for herself. Clients besiege her door with commissions. My learned friend has tried to make her refusal to gouge her clientele for large sums of money into something sinister. I see it as evidence of the purity and integrity of her artistic nature. This poor innocent child, living only for her art, wasn’t interested in money, or status, or any of the glittering distractions of the world. All she wanted to do was the one thing she’d always wanted to do. What, I ask you, could be more natural?

“And so she painted portraits, at least forty of them that we know about. And of these forty clients, a dozen have—most unfortunately—fallen ill. I feel sure that nobody has more sympathy for them and their families than my client. But what the prosecutor has signally failed to do—because it’s impossible—is establish any faint thread of a connection between these misfortunes and my client. Unless and until he can do so, I honestly believe there’s no case to answer.

“Consider the so-called victims. All of them are in late middle age or older. All of them—how can I put it delicately?—have enjoyed to the full the delights of the table and the wine cellar. All of them are men and women of great spirit and passion, with a tendency—a perfectly natural, indeed laudable tendency—to express themselves fully, to take matters to heart, to get excited and passionate about things they feel strongly about.

“In my hand, I have a copy of the standard work on diseases of the heart and brain, written by no less an authority than—” Well, modesty forbids. “In the passage in front of me, the distinguished author describes the causes, symptoms, and effects of a stroke. I won’t take up the court’s time by reading it aloud, the matter is common knowledge. A stroke is an affliction of the brain, caused by an interruption of the blood supply. It leaves the victim paralysed, unable to speak or move. It is caused by excessive eating and drinking, combined with violent exertion of the body, mind, or spirit.

“Consider what you know about the alleged victims in this case, all prominent members of society. They all ate and drank to excess; they all were involved in public life, in politics, government or the arts; they lived passionate, stressful lives. They were, in short, prime candidates for the terrible illness I’ve just told you about. That this scourge should have come upon them, cutting them down in their prime, depriving us of their talents and their usefulness to our society, is to be deeply regretted. For once, the word ‘tragedy’ would scarcely be an overstatement. But to ascribe these disasters to my poor young client—on what grounds? I have heard none today, and once again, I call on my learned friend to enlighten me. Nothing more? Nothing at all? Well, then.

“Just in case you still aren’t convinced, let me point out a few more relevant details. This comprehensive and universally respected book in my hand contains no mention of any poison, drug, or artificial stimulant capable of deliberately causing a stroke. Leave aside the fact that no chemical apparatus was found in my client’s possession; ask yourself this: could this simple country girl have discovered or invented such a poison, on her own, uneducated, brought up among the cows and goats? I think not. As it happens, I know a little about alchemy. It would take a genius a lifetime of research to come up with such a complex toxin. My client is nineteen years old. Draw what conclusions you wish.

“As I’ve already mentioned; as the prosecutor himself admits; my client has painted at least forty portraits, almost certainly more. Twelve from forty leaves twenty-eight. If my learned friend’s allegations have any substance at all, there should be at least twenty-eight other helpless victims in this city, sitting in chairs, staring helplessly at the wall. If so, we haven’t heard about them, and their existence is therefore not admissible in evidence. In fact—I’ve made my own enquiries, since the prosecutor seems to have neglected to do so—all twenty-eight are in perfect health. Among them, please note, are senators, members of the aristocracy, leading figures in commerce, business, and the arts.

“My learned friend made a perfunctory effort to connect the status of the alleged victims to their dreadful fate, as though my client had sought to strike down the flowers of our society. The fact is, all her customers came to her clamouring to be painted; she didn’t choose them, they chose her. Twenty-eight rich, famous, influential, talented men and women were painted by my client and have suffered no ill-effects. Once again, the facts don’t simply speak for themselves, they shout at the tops of their voices.

“Recently, the wise and distinguished Senate of this city ruled unambiguously that there is no such thing as witchcraft or sorcery. But witchcraft and sorcery, I put it to you, are precisely what my client is accused of; tacitly, because to say so openly would be to invite ridicule. Therefore, for consistency’s sake, if for no other reason, I call on this rational, truth-loving court to dismiss these ridiculous charges and let my poor, long-suffering client go free. I rest my case.”

God, I’m good, though I do say so myself. The magistrate shook his head, blinked a couple of times like a dazzled rabbit, and said the magic words: case dismissed. You could have heard a pin drop.

I left, quickly.

Having done what I’d set out to do, I rushed off down West Street, through Absolution Square, short-cut through the Shambles, up Pin Street. I’d known from the outset that the wretched girl had to have a studio somewhere, or where else did she keep her paints, her easel and her money? I’m good at ferreting out stuff like that, so it hadn’t taken me long to discover where it was. I hadn’t gone there, because—well, like I said, nothing helpful to my case to be learned there. Now that I’d won, however, I had no such compunction. I wanted, make that needed, to know.

Stupid cheap lock, I don’t know why anyone bothers with them. Inside, I saw a chair, facing a shuttered window; two shelves lined with little pottery jars; two easels, on which rested two portraits of the same man, almost but not quite identical; a cheap earthenware plate; a pestle and a mortar; a tinderbox.

Oh God, I said to myself. Here we go again.

I thought; this time, I’m not involved. Nothing to do with me. True, I stuck my oar in, but even so, none of this is my responsibility, my job, my fault. I can just go a long way away and be free and clear. Above all, I owe no duty of care to the truth—me, of all people, perish the thought.

More to the point; if I interfere, what can I possibly achieve? Nothing.

I walked down to the Flawless Diamonds, where the stagecoaches leave for Mezentia and all points west. I had just enough money for the fare. The stage pulled in. Mezentia is lovely in the spring, when the cherry trees are in blossom. All aboard, they called out. It left without me.

Truth is, despite ferocious competition for the job, I am and always have been my own worst enemy.

Let me take you back a few years; I won’t specify how many, because I don’t suppose you’ll believe me. I was a student at what was at that time the finest university in the world, though it’s gone downhill a lot since then. I wasn’t the smartest kid in my year, not by a mile. I did my best to make up for my shortcomings through diligence and determined effort. You have faith in stuff like that, when you’re young.

I don’t know when I first noticed her. She wasn’t a student (no women at the university in my day) but she wasn’t a local’s daughter. She hung around in the square and the library forecourt, sketching in inks or charcoal; she wore a big straw hat which shaded out her face, and there never seemed to be anybody chaperoning her or keeping an eye on her, which was odd enough in itself. I can’t say I remember any of my fellow students making any sort of play for her whatsoever, which was stranger still. It was almost as though she was invisible and only I could see her. Now there’s a thought.

I have my faults, but chivvying unattached females isn’t one of them. Besides, in those days I was desperately earnest, and I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life: graduate, join a respectable Order, teach, research, write papers, win a chair, tenured professor by the time I was thirty-five. It was all I’d ever wanted.

But things weren’t going all that well. I was smart but not quite smart enough. I could feel the boundaries of my abilities, and I knew that what I wanted to achieve was just the other side of the rope. I could picture myself getting stuck somewhere in the middle, like a man stranded halfway up a mountain, unable to go further up or turn back. I could see myself scraping a doctorate; then what? Fine if I had private means; I could spend the rest of my life floating around the university, taking twenty years to write a modest paper on some peripheral issue, adding a footnote to the great book of human knowledge. But I had a living to earn, and for that I would have to be good enough, not just quite good, and there were so many better men than me. So, in due course, the scholarship money would run out and then it’d be back on the coach, back home, to the farm, or else a job as a clerk or a tutor to some rich man’s loathsome son. It’s a dreadful thing to be twenty-one and realise that you have no future after all.

Which may go some way to explain what I was doing on the bridge (not the famous one; the other one, about half a mile downstream), one foot on the parapet, staring down into the water. Whether I was thinking about jumping, or using the thought of jumping to force things back into perspective, I really don’t know; anyway, I was too preoccupied to notice someone walk up behind me until I eventually took a step back and trod on someone’s toe.

“It’s quite all right,” she said, grinning at me. “I’m just glad you decided not to.”

I looked at her. “That obvious?”

She had the enormous hat pushed back on her head, so I could see her face. Not beautiful exactly but striking. “You’d be amazed how many boys your age come and stand on this bridge, thinking what you were just thinking. Hardly any of them actually do it. What’s the matter? Debts, exams, girl trouble?”

You know how easy, how fatally easy, it is to tell things to a stranger you wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else. Also, unlike anyone I’d ever met in my entire life, she sounded interested. So I told her, the whole story, everything. She didn’t interrupt, and when I finally ran dry, she smiled at me. “Is that all?” she said.

I pulled a face. “I know,” I said, “it does all sound a bit stupid when you say it out loud. And of course there’s millions of people in the world far worse off than me—”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “You have a real problem, a very serious one. I’d be suicidal too, in your shoes, if there wasn’t a perfectly simple way out.”

She’d lost me. “What?”

And then she’d linked her arm through mine, and we were walking side by side, down the broad steps to the towpath. “You come here a lot,” she said.

“My lodgings are just down there,” I said, pointing vaguely. Poor Town. Well, she’d probably guessed that from the deplorable state of my shoes, if she was even remotely observant. “I take the short cut through Long Meadow to the Schools.” I stopped. She grinned.

“I’ve noticed you,” she said. Curious way of putting it, I thought at the time. “You’ve got an interesting face.”

Of course, she was an artist. “Interesting,” I said. “That’s not actually a compliment.”

“It’s a statement of fact.”

“Ah,” I said. “One of those.”

When I left my room that morning, I hadn’t decided what I was going to do with the day; either a short drop and a splash, or go to the library and read Psammetichus on essential transfiguration. What I hadn’t anticipated, one little bit, was a stroll along the riverbank with a girl in a straw hat. “What perfectly simple way out?” I asked her.

“I’ll tell you, if you’re good,” she said. “Later,” she added. “Right, here we are. Now stand under that willow-tree over there and look thoughtful.”

Out with the slate, the sheet of paper, and the stick of charcoal. Ah, I thought.

“You’re going to be Parthenius,” she explained, “and the river’s the Aurus, and somewhere over there out back of the charcoal sheds is presumably violet-crowned Olessa, though of course that won’t be in the picture. No, keep still, you’re no use to me if you keep moving about.”

Keeping still isn’t one of my strong points, as various law officers have discovered the hard way over the years. But I tried my best, and eventually she said, “All right, you can breathe now.”

My left foot had gone to sleep. “Can I see?”

She turned the slate to her chest. “It’s only a sketch.”

“What on earth is the point of a picture if people can’t look at it?”

“It’s not terribly good,” she said. “Now turn that way, and look melancholy. No, that’s not melancholy, it’s heartburn. That’s better. Hold it exactly like that.”

We ended up spending the rest of the day together, and the next day, and the day after that, but still she hadn’t told me the perfectly simple way out. I tried reminding her tactfully, but she changed the subject. Besides, I’d sort of figured it out for myself by that point. The simple way out of my frustration and despair was to fall in love with a wonderful girl, which apparently I’d now done. Silly me for not having thought of it earlier.

“What would you like,” she asked me, at some point, “most of all in the whole world?”

We were watching the swans on the river. Apparently they mate for life. “That’s a good question,” I said.

“Pretend I’m a goddess or a witch and I can grant wishes. Money?”

“Money isn’t everything,” I said. “No, what I’d like is to be clever.”

She pulled her poor-baby face. “You are clever.”

“I wish I was the cleverest, wisest man who ever lived.”

“Mphm.” She nodded. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather have the money instead?”

“The wisest man who ever lived would never be short of money,” I said. “But a lot of rich men are idiots.”

“All right, then,” she said, and threw a crust for the ducks.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

She frowned at me. At that precise moment I was being Teudra dividing the upper and lower heavens, which is a confoundedly tricky pose to hold for more than ten minutes. “What?”

“It’s a very personal question. You may not want to—”

“Keep still. What?”

I couldn’t draw a deep breath without wobbling, so I just made myself say it. “Where does all the money come from?”

“Oh, that.” What had she been expecting me to ask? “I’ve got a rich uncle in Permia. I’m all he’s got, and he wants me to enjoy myself. What do you want to do most in the whole world, he said, and I told him, this. So here I am.”

“Ah.”

“Talking of which.” She appeared to be peering past my ear, looking intently at something that wasn’t there. Painters do that. “What do you want, most in the whole world?”

“Right now? To itch my nose.”

“Tough. What else?”

“To stay here like this, with you, forever.” Well, it seemed the thing to say at the time.

“I see,” she said clinically. “So as far as you’re concerned, this is the perfect moment.”

“Apart from the itch. Look, do you think I could just—?”

“No.” She took a step back and looked at me, or at the god creating the firmament through me his temporary proxy. “I once read that if there’s a moment so perfect that it couldn’t possibly be improved upon, it could never ever be any better than this in any respect whatsoever, then Time would stop still, everything would be trapped motionless like a fly in amber, and that would be the end of the world.” She squidged the end of her brush between her fingers. “That’s what made me want to paint.”

“To bring about the end of the world? A bit antisocial.”

“The perfect moment, captured for ever,” she said. “A painter can do that. No more old age, no more death. In a painting, you can be forever young, beautiful and happy. There would be no later, no decay, no decline, no consequences.”

“I don’t see a future in it.”

She clicked her tongue to acknowledge the wordplay. “All right, relax, before you fall over. Take the weight off your feet, I’ll make us some tea.”

She made the most wonderful tea, full of obscure, delicate scents and flavours. I sat on a chair, massaging the calves of my legs. She perched in the window-seat, with the light behind her.

“And that’s not all I can do,” she went on. “I can make people what they want to be. I can make old women look young, poor men look rich, sad people look happy.”

“Stupid into clever?”

“Piece of cake.” She turned the easel slightly. “See for yourself.”

She really was very good. Teudra, not only as the Creator, but in his aspect of bringer of wisdom; perfectly represented, a whole college of theologians couldn’t have found fault with it. And yet it still looked just like me; weird.

“Anyway,” she said, turning the easel back. “How are you getting on with Induiomarus?”

“Going through it like a knife through butter,” I said cheerfully, and it was true. Ever since I’d met her, the standard of my work had improved dramatically; all my tutors had commented on it. Hence Induiomarus; we weren’t supposed to get on to him until third year, but there I was, soaring through the notoriously obscure and elliptical Shadow Analects like an eagle. “Actually, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

“Is that right?”

I nodded. “He says everything in this really cryptic, mystical, up-himself way, but actually what he’s saying is pretty obvious. And I think I’ve caught him out in a false premise.”

“Ooh,” she squeaked. She was alarmingly well-read. “Which bit?”

“Book seven, the clockmaker analogy. I don’t think it works, because if the clock is found lying on the seashore—”

“How’s it supposed to have got there? Yes, I wondered about that, too.”

I gazed at her. Talk about your perfect moment. “I’m so glad I met you,” I said.

She was excited. She’d gotten a commission to paint a portrait of the Professor of Alchemical Theory. I was stunned. As far as I was concerned, the man was a god. “How on earth did you manage that?” I asked.

“Through my uncle,” she said. “He knows all sorts of people.”

“All the best portrait artists do it,” she explained. “Move, you’re in my light.”

She was sitting in her studio, with her back to the window. Before her were two easels, on which stood two almost but not quite exactly identical paintings of an old man with a bald head and whiskers. “You paint two pictures,” she said, “precisely the same. But one of them will be perfect.”

“The one on the left,” I said.

“You see? It works. It’s an old trick. I read about it in a book somewhere.”

“Twice the work,” I said.

“That’s why the best artists get paid ridiculous sums of money.”

I studied the painting for a moment. “I’ve never met him,” I said. “But I feel like I’ve known him all my life.”

“Euphronius says the job of the artist is to capture the soul of the sitter.”

I smiled. “Well, you’ve done that all right,” I said.

“I’ll make us some tea.”

Three days later, the Professor suffered a devastating stroke. He was found in his study, surrounded by his books, mouth lolling open, eyes fixed on the wall. He never moved again.

“Just as well I got cash on delivery,” she said. “For the painting.”

That struck me as a bit insensitive. “At least his family will be able to remember him as he was,” I said. “Thanks to you.”

“When he was perfect.” She smiled at me. “That’s the point,” she said.

She went to bed early. I sat up finishing an essay. As I sprinkled it with sand to blot the ink, I remembered that she’d left the lamp lit in her studio. That would never do; smoke from a guttering wick, with all that drying paint. I went in to put it out.

There was a distinct smell of burning; not just the lamp. I noticed a little brass stove, the sort that elegant people use for making omelettes at the table. There was something in it, smouldering. I investigated. The charred ends of splintered limewood board, the stuff she used to paint on. I looked round and saw the two easels. On one of them was a finished portrait. I recognised it at once; my tutor, Lacasta, the most amazing likeness. The other easel was empty.

Three days later, Lacasta had a stroke.

(I only found out how she did it years later, in a digression in a book about witchcraft among the Permian nomads. To steal someone’s soul, apparently, you paint a picture of the victim, burn it and grind the ashes up fine, into dust, which you seal in a small pottery jar. When you want to consume the soul, thereby adding its wisdom, force of character and other virtues to your own, you mix the dust with certain herbs and make an infusion; a bit like tea. All complete nonsense, of course, said the book I read; there’s no such thing as sympathetic magic, and probably just as well.)

I was out of there like a shot, as you can imagine. I ran up the street in my nightshirt, hammered on the door of a good-natured friend, borrowed a change of clothes and two angels, and caught the night mail to Solitene. From there I wrote to my supervisor explaining that for urgent personal reasons I could no longer continue my studies at the university; however, I would be eternally grateful if he would write me a letter of recommendation to the faculty at the Golden Hook. The letter arrived by return, and it must have said something nice because the Dean of the Hook gave me a place on the spot. A year later I graduated top of the class, was awarded a fellowship, assistant professor eighteen months later, all the rest of it. Some bad stuff happened after that, but it’s not relevant to this story.

She was in her studio when I got there. She looked different. She reminded me a lot of someone I used to know. “Hello, you,” she said.

“You again,” I said.

She smiled at me. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

Behind her, the shelves were empty. On the floor, about a dozen little pottery jars, with their lids off. She had a little brass stove, on which sat a silver kettle. She’d just made a pot of tea.

“It wasn’t a coincidence, was it?” I said. “You being on that coach.”

“It was awfully sweet of you to defend me,” she said. “Did you know it was me?”

“No.”

“Fibber. Of course, they couldn’t have hurt me. Nobody can hurt me, physically. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“I made it for you.”

I stood there rooted to the spot. “How did you find me?”

“Very easily,” she said. “I only started looking recently. You see, I was very much in love with you back then, and when you ran away I was heartbroken, but then I met someone else and we were very happy together for a very long time. And then he ran away too, and I remembered you. Sure you don’t want some? It’s good for you.”

I felt sick. “You ruined my life,” I said.

“Rubbish.” She had a nice smile. “I asked you what you wanted, and you said, to be the wisest, cleverest man who ever lived. And you said money wasn’t everything, and you’d always be able to get some from somewhere. I gave you what you wanted, because I loved you.”

I managed not to scream at her. “You made me a thief,” I said. “A con man. Some days I wake up and even I can’t remember which name I’m using.”

“You can be anyone you want to be. That’s another special gift.”

I looked at her. “I don’t think I’ve got anything more to say to you,” I told her. “I don’t ever want to see you again. Don’t come near me. Just leave me alone.”

She shrugged. “You don’t mean that.”

“Trust me.”

A little sigh. “You won’t know it’s me, the next time, and the time after that.”

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

“You didn’t in Blemya.”

Oh God, I thought. But she’d died, surely. “Keep away from me,” I said. “Do you understand?”

She didn’t say a word, just carried on smiling like an angel. I reached the door.

“Cobalt,” she said. “It’s what you’ve been missing. For the blue paint. I love you,” she said.

“See you in Hell,” I said, and slammed the door.

Knowing her, I probably will. One day I’ll be sitting there, burning quietly, up to my manacled ankles in molten sulphur, and there she’ll be, smiling, holding a bunch of keys and a teabowl.

Draw your own conclusions about the doctrine of the perfect moment. For me, the world ended a long time ago.

#K.J. Parker #The Thought that Counts #short story #actually long story

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scint · 4 years ago

Text

The Meaning of Life

What you’re about to read is something 18 year old me in 2008 thought would be appropriate to submit to my AP English teacher for one of our final projects. I am both mortified and kinda pleased with myself, but Mr. Davies I am so sorry my guy.

While the meaning of life has a different meaning for every man, most of us do share the same inquisitions; where are we from, where are we now, how’d we get here, why are we here, and so on and so forth. But to know the true meaning of life one, one must first lay out the cyclic pattern known as a life in its different stages. By doing so, one can examine these various aspects and create their own formula to parallel the ultimate unanswered question: What is the meaning of life?

Let’s first begin with the basics. One must first be born to join the rest of the scandalized global populous in its search for the purpose of humanity. Say then that Gabriel, or let’s call him Gabe for the sake of the ink spared in the process, was born on April 21 at 3:15 PM on a gloriously warm day for the spring season. Quite frankly, outside of his immediate relations including his parents, grandparents, and siblings, least a fretful ol’ uncle or auntie be thrown into the mix, no one cares. The doctors helping the busting old broad release the tremendous burden cast upon her by some midnight carousing approximately nine months prior could care less, except that the bonus brought on by delivering twenty babies this month is seeming increasingly attainable at the moment, today being the seventeenth delivery this April. For dear Mother, while she’s not likely to forget this sinful ordeal anytime soon, she will eventually allow the once tangible excitement of new beginnings to become devoured by her resentful back pain, itching, and burning of the breast due to the swelling of her blands, and finally annoyance and regret at giving birth to the little monstrosisty like a biscuit lathered in gravy at Larry’s house on Thanksgiving. The father will be grateful at not having to heave and ho like a pack mule for hours on end like his disheveled wife. All other relatives will fuss over Gabe and swoon about his ruddy cheeks, his fair complexion, his brilliant blue eyes, and his remarkable head of hair. That is, until he grows into his highchair a bit. Once his cheeks have begun to blend in with the rest of his face, his complexion becomes blotchy, his eyes turn a dark walnut coloring, and his hair grows too straggly for his young age, he will no longer be “awwed” and “oohed,” pinched and squeezed, nor spoiled or doted upon. Gabe will become apart of the struggling lower, or more aptly called disadvantaged, class - stealing, smelling, and above all, nose-picking.

Gabe’s early life is far too commonly the normal course of a wayward infant to deny. From the time we are born, since Gabe’s story is the norm after all, no one will give a flying fuck, or at least not as much as one would like to think.

Now onto our next stage: the maturing. For some raucous individuals it’s debated that this stage occurs at all, but in truth we should give it more credit than that. The stage I mean, not the knuckleheads. We all learn the rudimentary skills of bathing, eating, inhaling, coughing, exhaling, coughing again, going to the toilet, eating again, and napping, but not necessarily in that order. For instance, one could use the toilet before inhaling, or during the act if one is feeling daring on a given day. Poor Gabe, he gets this down a little slower than the others in his age slot, realizing that he can in fact have other things besides tuna fish sandwiches with the crusts cut off, barbeque chips, pickles, and Pepsi every afternoon at exactly 12:30 PM. Maybe he’ll have leftover meatload on Monday, then carefully prepared extra cheesy pizza on Tuesday, and finally go back to the comforting routine of tuna for the remainder of the week. He might even go bold and leave the crusts on next Monday, or perhaps something crazy like Coke instead of Pepsi. The options are endless!

Then comes the schooling, a privilege in some eyes, while some believe it to be a goddam death wish from a pussy pilgrim sitting on the John concocting an evil scheme approximately the size of the load he’s dropping, eventually exclaiming, “I’ll invent education-based learning facilities and make the youth of the world suffer! Mwahaha!”

True enough, schooling in difficult and hard to bear. Regurgitation of any kind is painful and humilitating. So is it true of memorization, the most common form of learning, wherein one reads a word enough times that you will remember it forever and ever, or until the exam the next morning. Then there’s repetition, repeating an act enough times until you can do it flawlessly. This is a more hands on approach, although it can be a dangerous one. It involves unconscious knowledge and action, meaning one can lose control over it when it occurs or the number of times thtey perform said act. For instance, a man of business cannot get a chubby in front of a crowded meeting room although he pummeled his voracious tart enough times the night before with those french ticklers of his to loosen her to Pamela Anderson status. Finally, there is simply remembering. This is a masterful technique if one is lucky enough to acquire it. Only gifted members of the gentry of intellectuals are able to possess this highly sought after quality. The majority of the population suffers from CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) Disease, and as of the present they have not yet found a cure. In this respect, it is as fatal as cancer and AIDS. Dear Gabe, he’s not expected to beat this deadly infirmity, and yes, he did get a chubby at a very important international meeting, poor fellow.

Gathering from the collection of facts regarding schooling, one can conclude that education itself was founded in shit, that people expect us to remember more shit over the centuries, and that the information we are expected to learn is in fact for the most part of the same quality as rectal distribution, also know as shit. Sympathy to the average student, and rotting hell to Horace Mann.

On to, you guessed it, the next stage, a lovely little thing I’d like to call “man on man,” or more commonly interpreted as war.

Men have long since fought each other, killing, wounding, and flagellating each other since the beginning of time. War is simply another word for fighting amongst two or more people. War has occurred between individuals, religious groups, high school cliques, entire nations, action figures, and, most notably, Osama bin Laden versus everybody else. War is a time full of emotion and pain, blood and corpses, boom and depression, and all sorts of unpleasantness, like a hangnail. Some fo it for fun, some do it because they can, and some just do it ™ (paid for by the gents and ladies at Nike). Yes, unfortunately bloodshed is sometimes meaningless. Then again so is the Sunday drive in the countryside. If you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so bad, now does it?

Gabe wouldn’t know. Gabe never fought in a war of any kind, expect the Osama bin Laden war of course.

Our next venture is middle aged life. This is a period in one’s life where things tend to stand still. You’re not quite old, but you’re also “no spring chicken” as they say. You now have a career if you went to college and didn’t die in war and vacation to the in-laws every year for a grueling visit. You read books if you’re literate or picture alphabet books from grade school if schooling was especially hard on you. Interesting conversation topics have dwindled, as have the number of activities you wish to do each day. One no longer feels the need to cough twice, but would rather enjoy a savory fart or belch to tide himself over. In short, middle age is a drag. Gabe agrees, as his wife’s parents are particularly cruel every Christmas; the fruitcake is surely filled with carpenter nails. However, the wife still loves the french ticklers every now and again, so life isn’t really all that bad.

During this middle age stage, men consider what they must do with their bodies once they’ve kicked the bucket and have no more use for it. Donate it to scientific research, turn into ashes and sit on a son or daughter’s mantelpiece for years, rot with the already dying Earth, or donate organs and tissues so that once you die stangers can have your heart or liver placed in them so that they won’t die for a few more years. These life-altering (or death-altering, depending on if you’re a glass half empty kinda guy) choices are not to be taken lightly and decided over dinner. Research must be done. If you think scientific research is the way to go, your head could end up on a surgeons plate to renew their license, being deemed fit to perform head surgery on another human being that’s actually alive. Cheerful prospect, isn’t it? Then there’s cremation. If you don’t like the idea of your corpse being engulfed in flames and having your kinds and grandkids stare at your remnants over dinner, this is not recommended. Being buried in a decorative tomb of wood and concrete is yet another option, having people come over and cry over your cadaver, saying what a great man you were in life, the hoock of the family eyeing your cousin Sid. Organs and tissues we’ve already covered.

Just for the hell of it, Gabe chooses the burial. He always thought Darla and Sid would make a cute couple.

Your final years of life, in short, suck worse than the rest of your life put into one. You’re in bad health, but none of the children will take you in once their mother died a few years back, also no cause for celebration. So you’re forced to move into a nursing home where all you’re allowed to eat is mashed potatoes, applesauce, and acrid green gelatin. The other old folks don’t want to talk to you, some because they don’t remember saying hello to you in the first place, others because they’d rather gossip with their “other friends” instead of actually getting to know you. The chatter gets annoying after a while when all you hear is, “Well, I heard he’s an ex-porn star from the fifties,” and, “There goes Gabe. My God, his ass sags worse every time I see the poor ol’ bastard.” Gave does his best to make the most of it. He encourages the porn star rumors and tells all the girls he’s still got some french ticklers left from the good ol’ days. He deals with the ass-sagging comments; after all, they’re true.

And finally, here is it. The end of life as we know it. Real, honest to goodness death. To Gabe’s great displeasure, he never finds out whether Sid and Darla got together after the funeral, or whether or not one of the ladies at the home tried to find his nonexistent french ticklers in his room once he’d permanently vacated it.

As a lesson to all, life is not pleasant. It’s not a choice, but rather something we’re forced into at conception. No one wants to live life to the fullest like many say, but would rather wing it at best and hope for a passing grade. Life in its entire splendor is nothing more than one shitty day after another.

So what’s the meaning of life you ask? Gabe can’t tell you. Gabe can relate his numerous values to you, recite his favorite pieces of poetry, and clearly remember the first time his wife asked him to get a vasectomy, but he cannot tell you the meaning of life. He never really cared enough to find out. But he can make a damn good assumption that it’s got something to do with french ticklers.

WARNING: The narrator may not, and probably does not, agree with the vulgar material in this tale, although some of it is surprisingly based in truth. I’ll leave it to your imagination to decipher which is which.

His response, for anyone who’s curious:

Joann,

You made me blush and that doesn’t happen often. Nice job of not seeming derivative while emulating another style. Very interesting piece. Not exactly a short story, but highly enjoyable. 95 for some grammatical errors.

Booya, bitches!

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