#So excuse me if the characters are often drawn crudely. My one motivation right now is to establish the concepts and characters

[liminal-velocity]

Any questions? >ask box is open<

[busterkeatonfanfic]

Chapter 3

The third glass of whiskey at lunch was a miscalculation. He felt a little too unsteady on his feet as he walked into the barber shop set and they weren’t filming any pratfalls today, so he couldn’t play it off as that. He put an extra stick of chewing gum in his mouth just in case the first stick and brushing his teeth hadn’t concealed the smell of the drink on his breath, and tried to keep his gait steady. At least he’d be sitting for most of this scene.

Reisner was fussing over the props with the workmen, telling them some sign wasn’t straight. “Buster, where do you want these?” said Bert, gesturing to the barber chairs where he and his girl were destined to reunite. “Do you want them farther apart than this? Closer? Or what?”

Buster shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs. “They look fine to me. Maybe a little closer.”

“I mean, are the cameras going to have enough room?”

“Bert, they’re fine,” he said. “Move them a little closer together if you want. You know I trust you.”

Bert nodded and wrestled the other chair forward a few inches. As he wrestled, he said offhandedly, “You sure scared Nelly, didn’t you?”

Buster had no idea what he was talking about. “Nelly?”

“The prop girl, Nelly.”

“I’m not following.” Behind him and to the side, men bustled lighting into place. 

“The new girl I’ve got in the prop house. I sent her to ask you about the chairs. She looked like a ghost when she came back.”

A second ticked by, then another. Then another. He still wasn’t—

Realization landed like an oversized prop anvil. “Ah, hell.” 

“What?” said Bert.

“That was your prop girl?”

“Yes. What did you say to her to make her look so white?” Bert gave him a knowing look. 

“Nothing!” Buster said. He’d been acting and ad-libbing his whole life and he wasn’t about to stop now. “She got a little tongue-tied and I filled in the blanks. Thought she was coming to ask for her big break in the movies, you know how they corner me about that stuff. I must have embarrassed her, I guess.”

Blame that third glass of whiskey. It had made him dopey and loose, thrown off his judgment. There was a feeling in his stomach right now that he didn’t like, a sizzling sense of shame. It was a feeling that hung around too often these days in one form or another and he was getting sick of it. It wasn’t his fault. Nine times out of ten when there was a woman under the age of forty in his dressing room, she was already naked or willing to be. The other times, it was the age-old hard-luck story about needing a break. He’d had perfect reason to assume both motives. It wasn’t his fault.

The shame niggled. Oh yes it was.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d insulted the girl’s looks on top of it all. In truth, there was nothing wrong with them. She looked fine, just not suited to pictures was all. With the whiskey freeing his tongue, he’d thought nothing of answering honestly. Now the terrible coarseness of his remarks was apparent.

The shame went on niggling him until the cameras began rolling and he lost himself where he always lost himself, facing down the cameras with a stone face. 

By the time she’d gone to bed, Nelly’s humiliation had invited a friend along: anger. She knew that men were frequently cruel, licentious, and crude, but she’d never thought in a million years that Buster Keaton could be counted amongst them. All of it was a damnable lie, the wife and the children and the sophisticated parties, and most of all the sweet trepidatious Buster of the films. He wasn’t Rudolph Valentino’s Sheik or John Barrymore’s Don Juan, not her favorite character or star in other words, but she’d always found him charming; what girl didn’t? She had to wonder—were they all like this? Did Valentino have a nightly habit of robbing women of their virtue? Did Barrymore delight in dressing down girls until they felt about as small and as low as a bug? 

She rolled onto her side fitfully, fuming. It now seemed like a mistake to come to California. Perhaps it was just better to turn tail and go back to Evanston rather than spend another day in the employment of a man who had belittled her ambitions and her looks before she had a chance to get a word in edgewise. She could maybe work herself up to a couple starring roles in local productions, retire at the height of her career, marry, and host garden parties and luncheons for the Women’s Auxiliary Club just like her mother and aunts. Of course, the thought wasn’t a serious one. She was being paid a handsome twelve dollars a day, far more than she’d ever earned as a part-time governess in Evanston. She’d swallow her pride, finish out the picture, and use the experience as entrance into another picture, maybe not a laugh feature next time.

She let a fantasy of John Barrymore rock her off to sleep. Although she’d never seen him in Hamlet , she’d clipped a picture from the production from a magazine and glued it into her scrapbook: dark clothing, brooding brow, those strong hands that could clutch a girl and make her swoon. After Steamboat wrapped up, she’d return south to Hollywood and finagle her way onto the United Artists lot, where she would be cast as Katherine to Barrymore’s Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew . The last thought in her mind before she drifted off was of Barrymore’s big hands tearing the blankets off of Kate as she lay in bed, declaring them unfit for such a woman as his wife.

  The memory of what he’d said to the prop girl bit at Buster like a flea all the next morning. As soon as the cameras stopped rolling, his traitorous mind would wander to the incident and he’d be reminded unpleasantly of what a low thing he’d done. He stuck to one whiskey at lunch, even though he would have preferred a second. He tried calling Nate at the Villa, thinking that hearing her voice might provide some kind of consolation. The phone just rang and rang, until finally Edwin picked up and told him she was with Dutch.

At last, his conscience pricked him so much he left his dressing room early. He peeked in the canteen and cheers of “Buster!” erupted from the extras and the crew. He gave them a wave of acknowledgment and left. The girl wasn’t there. He exited and headed toward the prop house. Feeling slightly shy in addition to remorseful, he swung open the door when he got there. The prop girl didn’t notice him over the sound of the radio. She had her back turned to him at the workbench and was crunching an apple and reading a book.

“Hello,” he said. 

“Jesus Christ!” she said, nearly startling out of her skin and whipping her head around.  

Her swearing made him feel better. In his experience girls who swore could take care of themselves, which meant that maybe he hadn’t crushed her underfoot like a flimsy petunia blossom.

She blanched when she realized who it was. “Oh. Mr. Keaton,” she said. An expression resembling dislike settled on her face. 

He couldn’t blame her. He crossed the room and swung himself onto the workbench, dangling his legs. “I insulted you yesterday,” he said, studying her face. Despite the dainty little mouth she’d drawn on with lipstick, she couldn’t hide the fact that her lips were full. Her brown hair was done up in earphones in a faux bob. She reminded him a little of Evelyn Nesbit. Now that he had a good look at her, without the glaze of whiskey, he doubly regretted what he’d said about her looks. 

She stared straight ahead, expressionless, the apple forgotten in her hand. She still seemed a little nervous around him, but there was a set to her jaw that told him he was not going to be forgiven easily.

“There’s baseball practice tonight at seven. You’re invited,” he tried.

She finally met his eyes. “I have plans.”

“Okay,” he said, conceding. “You’re angry with me. I get it. Look, I was out of line yesterday. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for opening my big fat mouth. I was way out of line.”

She merely looked at him. 

“I acted disgracefully. There’s nothing wrong with your looks. I never should have said anything, I never should have—” He couldn’t bring himself to mention that he assumed she’d also been looking for sex. “I’ve been out of sorts lately and, look, I won’t start making excuses. It was wrong, plain and simple. I made assumptions and I shouldn’t have. What’s your name? Nelly?” he said, pressing. He wasn’t going to let up until that flea he called his conscience stopped biting.

“Nelly,” she confirmed in a flat voice. 

“Let me make it up to you, Nelly. Do you want to be an extra today? I’ll ask Bert to give you the afternoon off.” He could almost see her internal struggle. She set her half-eaten apple on the workbench and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t want any favors,” she said, staring ahead.

She was a proud one. It should have annoyed him, but he found himself admiring her stubbornness. Anyway, he had a lot of practice in Natalie cracking tough nuts. He hopped off the workbench and sank to one knee, propping supplicating hands on her knee. “Please?”

She drew in her lips and he could tell she was trying not to smile. Ah, sweet victory. 

For his pièce de résistance, he broke into song. “ I can hear the robins singing, Nellie Dean. Sweetest recollections ringing, Nellie Dean .”

Nelly succumbed to the smile. “Alright,” she said, shaking her head and trying to hide it. 

“Good,” he said, getting to his feet. He crossed the room and poked his head into the area where all the costumes were stored. Although the film was ostensibly set fifty years ago, all of the women’s costumes were of the latest fashion. He thumbed through the rack and pulled out a few dresses halfway before selecting a pink sleeveless one embroidered with burgundy flowers. “Wear this,” he said, walking back into the main room and handing it to her.

She looked surprised. “Are you sure?” Her eyes told him she still didn’t trust him. 

“Of course I’m sure. Go dress and I’ll walk you to the set.”

Looking now as though she especially didn’t trust him, she nonetheless went into the costume room and closed the door behind her. She came out less than a minute later. She looked just fine—maybe not like a leading lady—but just fine. The shame nipped him again and he scratched it off, reminding himself that he was making it up to her.  

“Sure you don’t want something nicer for the shoot?” he said, noticing that she was wearing flat brown Oxfords.

“Oh, they’re fine. I don’t suppose the cameras will be anywhere near my feet.”

When he stepped closer to her, it clicked; she was a couple inches shorter than she’d been yesterday. He’d made her embarrassed of her height and she switched shoes. It was another reminder of how rotten his words had been. No taller than he was, she was certainly not a giant. He even had an inch on her, give or take. 

“Do I need to put on more makeup?” she said. 

He shook his head. “No, you don’t need to wear any if you’re in the background. We have to do it to stick out,” he said, indicating his powdered cheeks. 

“Alright then.”

“Hold on a minute.” He ripped a piece of paper from a steno pad on the workbench and wrote, Stealing Nelly for the afternoon. Will return her in a timely fashion. -Buster. He set the half-eaten apple on top of it for a paperweight and offered his arm to Nelly. She just stared at it and then at him. “I’ll walk you to the set,” he explained.

She continued to look unsure as she accepted it, but his conscience felt much lighter as they left the prop house together. 

The bright lights agreed with Nelly. They probably wouldn’t have appeared particularly bright to any proper budding starlet, but that Buster had made her an extra for a day, that she would actually be on film and tens of thousands of people would see her, was exactly what she’d been hoping for when she’d taken a train from Evanston to West Hollywood to Sacramento. 

It turned out that being an extra involved a lot of standing around waiting for direction while the cameras tracked the exploits of the main characters, namely Buster and his mouse-sized co-star Marion, whom everyone called Peanuts. The scene was about missed connections; Buster, encountering his girl on the street, tries to apologize to her. She ducks in and out of the telegraph office, debating whether to accept, then follows after him as he trudges away from her.

Peanuts needed the benefit of multiple takes. Buster was flawless, Nelly thought, in every one. Her role was to be one of the town inhabitants walking down the sidewalk. It was hot in the early afternoon sun and she was grateful that Buster had picked out a sleeveless dress for her. She tried to act casual while strolling back and forth and not get distracted by the action further down the sidewalk where Buster and Peanuts were.

After the scene had wrapped, the director and Buster moved onto the next one: Buster walks dejectedly up the street and a car whizzes his carpetbag out of his hands and onto its running board. She and the other extras gathered in a small crowd facing the car to watch. Behind the scenes like this, she began to see how the gags were accomplished. For this one, the camera tracked Buster on the left. When the car came into frame, it obscured most of his body. Because of this, the audience couldn’t see one of the actors in the car pluck the carpetbag from Buster’s hand in one fluid movement, which left him bag-free and bewildered after the car had passed. The hand-off was invisible. This scene took only a couple takes. Buster was all business in between, telling the other actors and the director in a serious way what he thought the scene should look like. It was all so fascinating to finally be on the inside and see the nuts and bolts. She watched carefully, trying to commit it to memory. 

For the next scene, the carpet bag was meant to tumble off the running board and trip up Buster, who was running at top speed after the car. It took around three or four takes for the bag to fall satisfactorily into Buster’s path. Each time it did, he would somehow tumble head over heels to miss it. The first time he accomplished the stunt, the extras hooted and broke into clapping. Buster flashed a quick smile, clearly pleased, and Nelly joined in the applause. No matter how many times he vaulted over the bag, going briefly vertical, she couldn’t tell how he did it. After that, it was back to the sidewalk for her even though she was too far in the distance, she thought, for the cameras to see her at this point.

After some time had gone by, Buster announced that it was a wrap. So that was that. She looked around at a couple of the other extras for guidance, wondering what came next. The logical thing to do would be to return the dress and finish out the rest of the day in the prop house, so she decided just to slip away rather than reveal herself as a rookie by asking. As she turned at the corner near the facade of the Western Union Telegraph building to take a shortcut, the sound of hurried footsteps made her look over her shoulder. It was Buster. The extras turned to look at them as Buster came to a stop. Nelly felt herself pale a little as she faced him. For all her bravery in the prop house earlier, she was still far from used to him.

“Coming to practice tonight?” he said, a little out of breath. 

She was surprised. She’d assumed that the invitation earlier had been flippant. “I can’t,” she said, before she had time to think about it. She had a hard time reading the answering expression on his face, but she thought it was puzzlement. “I have plans.”

However thrilling being an extra had been, part of her had not forgiven him. When she’d stepped back and looked at her torso in her bureau mirror that morning, all she could think about was his comment about her bosom being too big and her needing to lose twenty pounds. The words still felt like salt in a bleeding gash, even if he clearly did wish to make it up to her. Anyway, she wasn’t fibbing about having plans. She’d agreed to play blackjack with Joe and Maggie, the owners of the house on 22nd Street, that night. 

“Well, alright then,” Buster said, with a nod. “I’ll see you around.”

“Sure,” she said, feeling an upwelling of all sorts of emotions: regret at turning him down, pride at her own resolve, anxiety that he might decide to can her if she continued to rebuff him. “Thank you for letting me be part of the picture.”

“No problem.”

She nodded at him and they parted. 

The worst of the confused feelings had faded by eight that evening when she was at the leather-top folding table with Joe and Maggie in their sitting room, regaling them with stories from the day. By now, they knew that she was employed in the prop shop and not as an extra, so the fact that she really had been an extra that afternoon was of the utmost interest to both. She went over every detail, keeping back, of course, yesterday’s ignominious encounter with the picture’s star. As the conversation waned and they settled into the game of blackjack, she felt positively luminous. Not even Mary Pickford, she thought, could feel as famous as she did tonight. (Watch Steamboat Bill, Jr. here.)

[xxxthe-grammar-nazixxx]

Like a Boss

Disclaimer:  This is a Misfits fanfic. Any extra characters not originally on the show have been added by me. I do not own these characters (apart from Moira and Reg, her superior). Caution, some iffy language, sex scenes, and a heathy dose of wishful thinking. Set during season 2 after Nathan finds out he has a brother.  A new PO turns up, but she has an ulterior motive. However, her plans don’t go quite the way she expected... 

 Part 1

 Moira watched them from the safety of her new office. With the blinds drawn and the louvres open, she could see them, but she was pretty sure they couldn’t see her. Which was just the way she liked it.  The word was stealth. She felt rather like the lioness who waits patiently in the long grass for the weakest antelope to separate from the herd.  

And there he was.

At first glance, probably nobody would consider this guy the weakest link. He was loud, brassy, frequently crude, and clearly got off on being the center of attention. As a prison guard, and then a parole officer, she’d seen her fair share of his type. They were the class clowns, the ones who made it easier for the real threat to sneak under the radar and turn a relatively simple job into a complete and utter clusterfuck. It’d be a genius ploy - if these types actually had any idea what they were capable of. But too often, what was on the surface was the sum-total of its parts.

The rest of them … well, they pretty much made up your average group of ne’er-do-wells.  There was the athlete, the pretty girl, the chav and the quiet kid. Moira fully intended to keep a sharp eye on the quiet kid. They usually turn out to be your garden-variety virgin weirdos but sometimes you find a diamond in the rough. Or a great big bloody thorn in your side. Moira wondered which this one would turn out to be.

Enough sizing up, she thought, I’d better get out there before Groucho Marx decides he’s going to take control of things in my absence. Knowing the paper-pushers in the department, they probably hadn’t even alerted these guys that their last probation officer had gone missing.  That would explain why they turned up in the first place. If they knew, they’d have probably decided to skive off for a few days.

Grabbing a hair tie, she wrangled her bright red mop into a serviceable ponytail and checked the mirror in her handbag to make sure she didn’t have any of the poppy seeds from that morning’s breakfast muffin in her teeth. There was nothing worse than trying to assert your authority with a bunch of young people – especially delinquents like these – if you gave them even an inch of rope to hang you with.

The one she’d privately dubbed Groucho Marx because of his thick eyebrows and propensity to flirt with a light bulb was in the middle of a mock race call, as the group in the adjoining common room were put through their paces.  She peered through the blinds at the scene, trying to make out what manner of creature was being forced to compete for the entertainment of humans.

It’s a crab race, she realized. Are they for real?  Of all the things they could be using this place for, they decide to put on a time-trial for crustaceans.  I’ve got to get out of this place, she thought, shaking her head, before they infect me with their craziness!

She approached the group quietly.  Which wasn’t easy because Groucho was on a roll with his race-call, and she almost laughed out loud.  They seemed to be egging on a small, speedy crab with better peripheral vision than his peers. While the others waddled sideways and backwards and all over the shop, the speedster had his eye on the prize – whatever that was.  

‘Run, Forrest, run,’ urged Groucho.

Okay, I really should find out his name, Moira thought. Ditto to all of them. Time to break up this little shindig.

She cleared her throat and barked out an ‘Oi’ that was just a bit louder than she’d intended, because even the crab-wranglers looked up, temporarily taking their eyes off their charges. What ensued can only be described as utter mayhem as the crab-wranglers tried to work out whose shellfish was whose. A tubby, middle-aged man with a whistle around his neck glared at Moira. ‘Good work’, he called out. ‘Now how are we supposed to figure out who the winner is?’

‘That would generally be whoever’s in the lead,’ Moira replied, calmly, nodding in the direction of Speedy Gonzalez, who was mere inches from the finishing line while his fellow competitors were, well … not.  But she couldn’t resist an extra jab at the referee’s expense. ‘Of course, you could have invested in some name tags. You know, put some stickers on their shells with numbers on them?’

The referee looked positively apoplectic. Either that or he was having a heart attack.

‘Lady’s got a point there,’ Groucho observed. ‘I mean, it’s not a very well-organized affair if you ask me.’

‘I’m not askin’ you; am I, Curly Sue?’

‘Hey hey,’ Groucho cut in, putting his hands up in surrender. ‘No need to get personal!  I was just offering a bit of constructive criticism.’

‘I think we should leave them to it, don’t you?’ Moira pointed out. ‘They’ve got more than enough to handle without an audience.’

‘And you are?’  This was from the resident chav, a girl who wore her blonde hair scraped back from her face so tightly that it was frankly amazing she could move her forehead.

‘I’m Moira, your new probation officer.’

‘What happened to our last probation officer?’ asked the one she’d pegged as the dark horse of the group. He was mildly good-looking, with pale skin and a perpetually pained expression.

‘Oh, he quit. Said something like he’d rather be in Aruba than hang out with you rejects.’ Moira rolled her eyes. ‘Also, he said something about not wanting to be the “next cab off the rank”, whatever that means.’

The athlete – a tall, black kid – scoffed. ‘Yeah, that sounds like him.’

‘He must have heard about Sally,’ frowned the short, pretty one. ‘We never found out what happened to her, either.’

‘Well, apparently she’s also missing,’ Moira informed her. ‘Her and her fiancé, Tony. Remember him?’

She couldn’t miss the chorus of silent looks that passed between them.

‘What do you mean, she’s gone missing?’ The pretty girl asked.  ‘Is Sally all right?’

‘I think what it means is, they don’t actually know where she is,’ Groucho explained, with more than an air of condescension.

‘Well, d’uh, Nathan! All I meant was … well, she was the best one yet. She actually seemed to care.’ The pretty girl gave Groucho – or, Nathan, rather - a look that could kill, and he took a step back in mock panic.

Moira blinked. ‘The best one yet … Hang on … how many PO’s have you guys had, exactly?’

‘Oh, just two,’ Nathan informed Moira. ‘Since the storm, I mean.’

This drew a chorus of warning glares from his peers. Wait a tic, Moira thought. What in the blue blazes is going on here? What are they hiding?

‘That would be the storm from a few weeks ago, right?’ she asked the room in general. ‘The one with the giant hailstones or whatever the hell they were?’

‘They were bits of meteor rock, actually. The council had them scientifically tested.’

‘Oh, shut up, Barry! No one wants to hear your theories about aliens.’ Nathan sniffed.

I’ve got him pegged, Moira thought. Take the attention from him for a millisecond and he can’t cope.

Barry bristled with resentment. ‘I don’t think it’s aliens. I think …’

‘’Look,’ Moira interrupted, ‘I think we’ve spent enough time getting in the way of the Crustacean Olympics here. I think we should move off somewhere a bit quieter, where we can all hear ourselves think, and introduce ourselves. How’s that for a plan?’

 ****

 ‘So,’ Moira said, in a low voice into the phone’s receiver so that her charges wouldn’t overhear her if they chose to eavesdrop at the door, ‘I think something is definitely rotten in Denmark. They alluded to the storm – or the tall, loudmouth did – and they all gave him what can only be described as a death-stare. I think he’s the weak link, and I think he can be broken.’

‘Moira, these kids need a firm hand, not Tomas Torquemada.’

‘Oh, come on, Reg!’ she countered, with a grin. ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.’

‘You were just dying to drop that one, weren’t you?’ he laughed.

‘Excuse my French; but fuck yeah. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about employing any heavy-handed interrogation tactics. If you really want to know what happened to both Tony and Sally, leave it to me. I’ll get it out of him. Them,’ she corrected herself, quickly.  

‘Hmmm… I’ll leave it in your capable hands, then,’ her boss decided. ‘But no rough stuff, Moira. You’re dealing with kids here. Not hardened criminals.’

‘That,’ Moira told him, ‘remains to be seen.’

 ****

  She glided along a safe distance behind Nathan and the athlete – whose name was Curtis and who looked oddly familiar, although she couldn’t place him – and watched them, wishing she had the capabilities of the London Metropolitan police on her side, like she used to. She could have used a bug on one of these kids. Nathan was out, as he didn’t appear to enjoy the sensation of clothes against his skin for any length of time, so maintaining covert surveillance on him was going to be a challenge.

But any one of the others might have worked. Especially Simon, as unlike Nathan, he did like clothes. Multiple layers in fact.   Plenty of places to pin a tiny little receiver …

Wait, why am I even thinking about this? Moira wondered. Like Reg said, I’m not in corrections anymore. Prison stings are a part of my past. I need to get that through my thick skull!  What I can do, however, is keep a close eye on this bunch. Nice work, if you can get it!   They’re all fairly decent looking, for amateur criminals. No missing teeth, overpowering BO, or tattooed knuckles with this lot!

Some twenty yards in front of her, Nathan jumped up onto a concrete pylon and mimicked the Karate Kid in that famous stance.  He didn’t last long though, because Curtis gave him a playful push in the back. His sense of balance only just saved him from winding up in the river a few feet away. ‘You wanker!’ Nathan exclaimed, laughing. ‘You’ll keep.’

He’s the one, Moira decided. He’s the key to all of this. Now, how do I get him to do what I want?

 ****

 She had her answer fairly early on. That very week, as a matter of fact. It was a Friday, and the kids were talking about what they were going to get up to once they hung up their coveralls for the weekend.  There was the usual baiting of Simon, who, according to Nathan, was probably going to either play World of Warcraft non-stop for 72 hours or set something on fire; and some talk about Kelly getting back into a club she’d previously been banned from entering because of a catfight between her and her ex’s new girlfriend.  One thing Moira could always say about her job – it was never boring.

Then she saw her opening. Or rather, Nathan handed it to her.

‘So, Miss,’ (which was the name he’d taken to calling her, for some reason known only to himself). ‘How do you let your hair down?’ He hung off the back of his chair, his green eyes glinting with mischief as usual. One thing she could say about Nathan Young: he was definitely easy on the eyes, if not the ears!  (It wasn’t that she didn’t like his accent.  He just never seemed to shut up).

She grinned despite herself. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know, boyo.’

‘You’re Irish, aren’t you.’

‘Gee, whatever gave you that idea?’  

‘Well, your name, for starters.’

‘I could be Scottish.’

‘Yeh, but you’re not.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she agreed.

‘Why don’t you have an accent, then?’

‘I do, I’ve just spent a really long time in England. Practically grew up here. But every now and then – especially when I get angry or … otherwise emotional, the Irish in me does come out.’

The dimple in his left cheek became deeper as his grin grew wider. ‘Otherwise emotional? Hm… what would that entail, exactly?’

Moira chuckled. ‘Does your mind ever leave the gutter, young man?’

‘On occasion. Not really.’ He leaned his chin in his hand. His intense stare was beginning to make her nervous. And Moira, by nature, was not a nervous person.

She sighed. ‘I think those sorts of things are best left for me to know and for you to wonder about. Don’t you?’

‘Probably, but I’m just curious.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ she reminded him.

‘Ah Miss, you’re a mystery. Get it? A Miss …’

‘I get it,’ she said, smiling despite herself. Stay focused. Don’t let him sidetrack you, her inner voice warned. He’s surprisingly good at that. The kid could sell ice to the Eskimos. The dimple alone would close the deal.

He increased the wattage on his stare. Moira’s hands started to move of their own volition, playing with her watch; fidgeting with the amethyst ring on her right hand. What is this? she thought. I’m supposed to be putting him under the pump!

‘How old are you?’

She gaped at him. ‘Nathan Young, you know better than to ask any woman her age!’

‘Forty?’

‘Close enough. I’ll give you that.’

‘Fifty?’

‘Steady on! You’ll have me in a nursing home, soon enough.’

‘So older than forty, younger than fifty. I can work with that.’

‘Just what is that supposed to mean, exactly?’ She coughed. He was walking a line, now. She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or turned off.

‘Well, see, thing is, my old man …’

‘You are not thinking what I think you’re thinking!’

He blinked, innocently. ‘What?’

‘Setting me up with your “old man.”’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

He burst into a gale of laughter. ‘No, no … that’s not it, at all.’

‘Then what? What are you getting at?’

He regained his composure and met her gaze fair and square. ‘I was going to say, my old man’s getting married next Saturday. I don’t … I was invited but … we don’t really get along. There’s a plus one on the invitation, and … I noticed you’re not married, and you don’t have any pictures of any gentlemen friends on your desk, so … I was wondering … well, if you would kinda, sorta … wanna go as my date.’

Moira stifled the almost explosive urge to giggle. ‘Me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about Kelly or Alisha?’

‘I’ve …’

‘You’ve already asked them,’ she finished for him. ‘Nice to be first choice, I guess.’

He winced but didn’t apologize. At least, not right away. Instead he glanced warily in the direction of the others, who’d wandered off toward the vending machines, arguing about who was paying for the next round of crisps and sweets.  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Alisha’s kind of with Curtis at the moment, and Kelly said something, but I’m not sure what it was because I don’t speak … whatever language it is that she speaks.  That girl really needs an interpreter.’

‘So, she could have said yes?’

‘Going by the expression on her face at the time, I’m gonna say no.’

Moira shook her head, amused.  Nathan’s face fell, almost comically. ‘Oh, you’re not saying no, too?’

‘Surely there’s someone closer to your own age that you could ask?’

‘Not without being accused of in-breeding, no.’

Moira did laugh, then. And had to try and stop herself because he really did look dejected.

He sighed. ‘I guess I’ll have to give it a miss, then. I mean, what am I worried about, right? Dad’s not going to give a crap. He’s got his new family. The new missus is half his age, she’ll probably give him another sprog in about nine months’ time and then he won’t have to worry about this little black …’

Moira reached out and put her hand over his. ‘I’ll go.’

His face brightened. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, if it matters that much to you, I’ll go. I’ll probably regret it and you’re sure as hell not getting anything extra out of it, so don’t even think about it – but I’ll go. Happy?’

He grinned, the dimple making another appearance. ‘Ecstatic.’

****

 ‘So, how’s the subterfuge coming along?’ Her boss asked her, as they sat in a booth at their local, her cradling a G & T and he a Guinness.

‘Slowly.’  She took a sip of her drink. ‘I’m biding my time. What’s the rush? They’ve got about six weeks ‘til they finish their community service. I’ll find out what’s going on by then. Slow and steady wins the race.’

‘Right’ Reg conceded. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re enjoying this more than you should?’

‘Come on Reg, when was the last time I got to play detective on the job? Bristol? You hired me for a reason. I’ll get it done.’

‘Oh, I have no qualms about that,’ he said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them for the third time in half an hour.

‘What do you have qualms about, then?’

‘Your methods.’

She was relieved then, that she hadn’t told him about her impending ‘date’. He might consider the idea a gross violation of her authority over these kids, and while it probably was, she was chuffed at the fact that she hadn’t even had to pull any stunts of her own to try and get closer to Nathan. He’d handed her the opportunity on a silver platter.

‘I told you, there will be no Good Cop/Bad Cop. I’m over that.’

‘Moira, with you it was never Good Cop/Bad Cop. It was only ever Bad Cop/Bad cop.’

‘Oh, hardy-har-har.’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘If you were that worried I’d cross some kind of line, why did you hire me?’  She stared him down, defiantly.

He sighed. ‘Because you’ve got a way with kids. Sorry – young adults. They’re not kids. They trust you. They like you. You’re like that youngish aunt with the cool hair that they can confide in. And believe me, there is something they’re hiding from everybody. Not just the fact that Tony and Sally are missing. Something else.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Something weird.’

‘Weird how? I haven’t noticed anything.’

‘I don’t know, but it’s got something to do with that storm. Everything’s connected to that storm.’

‘Reg, you sound like one of those nutjob conspiracy theorists.’

‘Just … keep your ear to the ground. That’s all I’m saying. And don’t overstep.’

She sighed and downed the rest of her gin and tonic in one gulp. ‘Well, you’ll be happy to know I’m making decent headway with the weakest link.’

‘In what sense?’

‘In the sense that he flirts with me now, probably more than with the girls his own age.’

‘Well, you still only look about 35.’

‘Thanks, Reg.’ Moira’s eyes skirted the bar across the aisle and stopped in their tracks. Oh fuck, she thought. That’s the last thing I need right now!

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘Speak of the devil, and he appears,’ murmured Moira. ‘Do you want another drink?’

Reg lifted his glass. ‘I haven’t even finished my first one. But you owe me a round, anyway.’

‘Cheap bastard. I’ll be back.’

She set her glass down on the bar mat beside Nathan’s elbow and gave him a playful hip-bump. ‘What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?’

‘Miss!’ He grinned and threw an arm over her shoulders. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘No. Well … Mildly buzzed.’

She sniffed. ‘You smell like a distillery.’

‘Oh that. I spilled a Bourbon and Coke on myself earlier. Had to go to the men’s and clean up. Lucky I like dark colours or I woulda looked like I pissed myself.’

Moira couldn’t help but smile. ‘Some girl tipped her drink on you, didn’t they?’

He winced. ‘She dumped it in my lap, yeah.’

‘What did you say to her?’

‘Oh, I just gave her one of my standard lines. It’s usually a winner, but I don’t know what happened.’

‘Try me.’

‘What?’

‘What’s the line? I might be able to tell you where you went wrong.’

She ordered for herself and Reg; and gestured to Nathan. ‘It’s my shout.’

‘Oh, no I’m fine, thanks.’

‘So, what was the line?’

‘Oh … I don’t know … I’m really kind of second-guessing myself now.’

‘Nathan, pretend I’m some young thing you want to shag.’

It was relatively dim in the bar, but she could still see the glint in his eyes. ‘Miss, you are some young thing I want to shag.’

Moira felt her face grow hot. Don’t pay any attention. The guy would flirt with a doorknob. You know this.  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m flattered. I really am. So … give us this line, already!  I’m dead curious, now.’

‘Well … it’s … it’s nothing. It’s embarrassing. It’s kind of something I stole from … Austin Powers.’

Moira handed the bartender a tenner. ‘I’m sorry, what was that? You stole it from where?!’

‘Austin Powers’. If possible, he’d dropped the volume a few more notches until he was almost whispering. It was a good thing she was standing elbow to elbow with him.

‘Wait, that sounded like you said you got it from Austin Powers.’

He physically cringed. ‘Yeeeeah.’

Moira bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from laughing. ‘Not the suave spy I would have gone for but… horses for courses.’

‘I said …’ He leaned closer, so that his breath tickled her ear. ‘Those pants are really tight; how do I get into them? Then she was supposed to say …’

‘You can start by buying me a drink. I know it. It’s from The Spy who Shagged Me. Smooth, boyo.’ She chuckled. ‘Did you ever think of just walking up to a girl and saying “hi, I’m Nathan, can I buy you a drink?” You never know, it might actually work.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘You mean, be myself?’

‘That’s the general idea, yeah.’

‘Sounds risky.’

Moira laughed. ‘I think you’ll survive.’

‘So … are you … here with anybody?’

‘My boss, actually,’ Moira nodded in Reg’s direction. When she turned back, Nathan had a quizzical eyebrow raised. ‘No, it’s not like that. We’ve been mates for years. He’s happily married.’

‘Oh.’ She could have sworn he looked relieved. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Wait – Moira thought. Why would I want him to be relieved that I’m not seeing someone?!

‘Can I ask you a favor?’ She said, lowering her voice and leaning closer.

‘Of course. I mean, you’re doing me a hell of a favor on Saturday. I mean … if you’re still …’

‘About that,’ she interrupted, ‘if you happen to get talking to my boss at all, don’t mention the wedding to him, all right? It will not go down well. It’s technically … overstepping.’

‘So, you’re still coming?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you! I could totally kiss you right now.’

She should have been used to this sort of talk from him by now, but it still caused a jolt of electricity to race up her spine. And I want to let you, she thought, but there’s no way on God’s green Earth I’m admitting to that!

‘Oh well … that’s sweet. Um … I have to get back to my boss now so … I’ll see you Monday?’

‘Monday,’ he agreed.

She took one quick glance back at him before she turned and walked away. He looked so hopeful, so happy. For the first time since he’d mentioned the wedding, she felt good about saying yes.  And maybe even a tiny shiver of girlish anticipation; the kind she hadn’t experienced in years.

You’ve still got it, girl, she thought.

 ****

 Moira gave herself the onceover in the standing mirror in her bedroom. After asking Nathan what the dress code was; and finding that it was fairly relaxed – just a smidge more ritzy than smart casual – she went for an olive-green cocktail dress that her ex always said made her look like a mermaid, with her red hair tumbling over her shoulders.  A little bit of gold eyeshadow and burgundy lipstick and she was good to go. Not for the first time she was glad for her peaches and cream complexion. She didn’t need much foundation at all. Taking a deep breath, she slid on a pair of heels and grabbed her gold glow-mesh clutch. Rummaging around inside to make sure she had enough cash for the open bar, she hesitated, spotting the condom tucked in the folds of her purse.  Her stomach clenched.  She remembered why she’d left it there, months ago. The night she and Paul had gone out with friends and argued; and broke up. It had come completely out of the blue.  She’d hoped the night was going to end another way, because she’d gotten a promotion, and wanted to celebrate, but that wasn’t on the cards.  

She started to take the condom out – then had a change of heart. Always best to be prepared. She’d been a Brownie when she was a kid. They were always banging on about the Scouts’ motto.  

Just as she’d popped two Mentos in her mouth and double-checked her hair, the doorbell rang. At least he’s on time, she thought.  Now, this is not a real date, so stop thinking like it is! It’s a favour between two friends. Work colleagues, she reminded herself, quickly. In fact, not even that. In a weird way, I’m kind of his boss!

 And as his boss, you have some information to gather, she could almost hear Reg say.

Swallowing the mints quickly, Moira opened the door.

Suddenly, the wad in her throat seemed twice as big and twice as hard going down. Was this the same guy who regularly make fart and sex jokes in the same breath?!   It didn’t seem possible. He looked, well … frankly edible, really, in a casual pewter-grey suit with a crisp white shirt underneath. As was his fashion, the shirt was unbuttoned to just below his sternum, showing off a long, slim golden triangle of flawless skin. Moira found her eyes kept going to that strip of skin as if it was somehow magnetic. Finally, she dragged her eyes back up to his face. ‘Nice suit,’ she conceded.

He eyed her appreciatively. ‘Nice dress. You look like a …’

‘Mermaid?’

‘I was gonna go with Bond Girl, but yeah. Mermaid will do.’

‘Thanks. You’ve done something to your hair,’ she noticed. ‘Did you use a straightener?’

He ran a hand over it, as if the last however-long-it-took to get organized had slipped his mind. ‘Uh no, just some product. I mean … okay, not some. A lot.’

‘It looks nice.’

‘You mean, not like the usual bird’s nest,’ he joked.

‘I thought women were supposed to be bad at taking compliments.’

He chuckled but didn’t reply. Was it her imagination or did he seem nervous?  

She slipped out the door and locked it behind her. ‘Sorry, I’d ask you in, but we should probably get going.’ She explained. Plus, the thought of you standing in my lounge wearing that suit … I’m not going to be held responsible for what I’m likely to do!  

‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ he replied. A sly grin passed over his lips and was gone almost before she had the chance to register. ‘Maybe later.’

‘Yeah, buddy. Keep thinking that.’

  The drive to the bowls club was quiet, and full of a strange tension. He tried to dissipate it by turning on the radio but wouldn’t settle for one station. Moira gritted her teeth. She wished he would just let them sit in silence for a few minutes. But it was as if he needed noise as a kind of … social lubricant, maybe? Which was odd in and of itself because he was the most sociable person she’d ever met.

At the club, he ran around the back of the car and opened her door for her. It was so sweet. At least she thought so, until he explained that he’d borrowed the car from his mum for the night and the passenger door doesn’t open from the inside. So much for chivalry not being dead, she thought, stifling a grin.

Retrieving a hastily wrapped gift from the boot of the car, Nathan offered her his arm. ‘Okay, now, the story is …’

‘There’s no story,’ she finished for him. ‘I’m just a friend. You can say you met me at the community center. You don’t have to tell them anything more than that.’ She took his arm. ‘Besides, you don’t owe them anything. He might be your dad, but as you said, he did run out on you and your mum.’

‘Right, right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘True enough.’

‘Just relax,’ she told him, with an amused smile. ‘You look like you’re trying hard not to have a case of explosive diarrhea.’

He laughed a funny, high-pitched laugh. ‘Sexy.’

‘You don’t have anything to prove to these people. Remember that.’

‘I’ll try.’

 ****

 The bowls club had been decked out in white frothy tulle, with magenta trimming, for the ceremony. They took a seat toward the back, so as not to make a scene, and Nathan busied himself peering around as Moira sat quietly, strategizing.   How was she going to bring up the whole missing PO issue – pardon, missing PO’s, plural – without clueing him in to what she was up to?  She could hardly bring it up in polite conversation at the reception. Maybe later? Perhaps that whole idea of inviting him back to her place wasn’t such a bad one, after all. If she got him sufficiently plastered, the alcohol could work as a kind of truth serum …   Would he stop shaking that bloody knee, she thought, interrupting her own train of thought. It’s distracting!  She gave him another couple of minutes, then reached out and clamped a hand on the offending knee, which was, fortunately, the one closest to her (or to the casual observer, it would have looked super-iffy!)

Nathan spun around. ‘Huh? What?’  

‘Your knee was jumping up and down like a bloody jackhammer,’ Moira whispered. ‘Do you need a Valium? I have some in my clutch.’  Good idea; said that voice in her head. Valium on top of alcohol. He’ll be like a lamb to the slaughter.  If it doesn’t knock him out completely.

‘No, I’ll be fine.’

Damn.

He grinned. ‘As long as you keep that hand on my leg.’

She removed the hand.

The ceremony was blessedly short.  Not on the level of the short, short version in Spaceballs (Do you? Do you? Good, you’re married; kiss her) but it left out all the boring, sentimental bullshit most wedding ceremonies are full of and just got down to business. Moira had to wonder if Nathan Snr’s wife was a blow-in looking for a visa. Not that Nathan’s dad couldn’t possibly find someone who wanted to marry him for himself, but the ceremony had that rushed quality of a marriage of convenience.

‘Where is your new stepmother from?’ she whispered to his son.

‘Hungary, why?’

‘Oh … just curious. She looks familiar,’ she lied. ‘How long had they been together?’

‘About half a year, I think. Maybe less.’ He turned toward her. ‘Why the interest?’

‘Like I said, just … making conversation.’

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You aren’t thinking of dobbing them into immigration, are you? Because frankly, I think that’d be a low blow. Even if my old man probably deserves it. He seems happy.’

‘No, I’m not thinking that at all,’ she assured him. ‘Just because I’m part of the system, doesn’t mean I am the system.’

‘Okay. I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.’

After the ceremony Nathan purposely dragged Moira to the front of the line to meet and greet the married couple. Now he’s showing off, she thought, and the idea made her smile. Even though they were supposed to be just friends, Nathan clearly wanted his father’s approval.  She curled her arm around his and turned her body toward him as they reached the happy couple. He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I thought you said just friends? That you weren’t into pretending we were a couple?’

‘I did. And that’s still true,’ she whispered back. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with a little confusing body language. Don’t you want to make them talk?’

Nathan grinned widely. ‘You’re a woman after my own heart, Miss.’

‘You can drop the “Miss”, too, while you’re at it,’ she told him. ‘They’ll think you’re dating your teacher.’

‘Moira, then.’

She liked the way he said her name. She also liked the way he was looking at her now.  Not in a sleazy, undress-her-with-his-eyes glaze, but a respectful, “we’re in this together” way.   To quote the man himself, she thought, I could totally kiss him right now!  Stop, her inner voice warned. Just stop. You’re heading into dangerous territory here. You’ve got to look at this like it’s an undercover operation. He’s the witness. And what do they tell you about witnesses in law enforcement? Never get too close. Especially not physically!

‘Nathan! So good you could come.’ The two men shared an awkward hug and parted swiftly.

Nathan leaned forward and kissed his new stepmother on the cheek. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, in a thick Eastern European accent. ‘I look forward to getting to know you, Nathan.’

‘Err … yeah, same here.’

‘Hopefully one day you will have a little brother or sister to look up to you.’

Nathan glanced at his old man. ‘So, you never told her, then?’

His father paled. ‘About what?’

‘About Jamie.’

‘Who’s Jamie?’

‘Yet another kid he abandoned,’ Nathan informed her. ‘My half-brother. See, he likes the idea of family, he just can’t deal with the reality of it.’

‘You little shit …’

And it was on for young and old.

God, you just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Moira thought, as Nathan and his father got into it, in front of the entire congregation. Yet she couldn’t help feeling a begrudging admiration for him. And had to wonder …  had this been his plan all along? To humiliate his old man in front of everyone he’s ever known?  Is that why he deliberately invited a woman at least twenty years older than him, to be his official date? Considering Nathan’s father’s new wife looked about 27 years old, Moira wouldn’t mind betting she’d hit the nail on the head. It was a stark comparison – the father with the much younger woman, facing off against his son, whose date who could have been his cool, classy aunt.

I have to do something about this, she thought, as the situation looked as if it was about to resort to fisticuffs.  It’s a wedding, for fuck’s sake!  

She’d broken up prison fights before. This should be a cinch. Putting herself between Nathan and his father, Moira pushed both men back to their corners, simultaneously.

‘Grow up, you two,’ she commanded. ‘Mr. Young, I’m so sorry. I had no idea he planned on making a scene. Nathan, you’re coming with me. Don’t argue.’

‘Who’s this?’ Mr. Young asked Nathan.

‘This is Moira,’ Nathan replied. ‘My date.’

‘His girlfriend, he means,’ Moira jumped in. ‘Aren’t I, Baby?’ She gave him a coy smile, and a secret wink.

Nathan blinked a couple of times and looked for all the world like a fish out of water.  She didn’t wait for his reply. ‘Anyway, he’s sorry he ruined your wedding. Aren’t you, Nathan?’ She whipped around to glare at him. ‘Apologize.’

Nathan’s old man smirked. ‘By George, he’s finally found someone with a bigger set of balls than he has.’

Moira responded to this by knocking Mr. Young flat on his back, grabbed Nathan, and they both got the hell out of there before WWIII erupted.

 ****

 ‘Thank you for that. You saved the day,’ Nathan said, in between gasps for breath, as he collapsed against the side of his mum’s car.

‘I thought he was going to flatten you. You’re lucky he reined himself in.’ She shook her head. ‘What possessed you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Just the idea of him erasing the fact that my brother existed … it was just so him, you know? So typical of him.’

‘Maybe he’s hoping for a second chance. To be a real father, I mean.’

‘Make that third chance. Okay … can we just go home? I need to get out of this monkey-suit.’  He pulled at the cuff of his shirt, roughly. ‘Damn thing’s choking me.’

Moira laughed. ‘You’re not even wearing a tie.’

He gave her an impatient look. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

Moira bit her lip. ‘I’m probably gonna get fired for this if they find out, but … how about we go to my place, instead? I mean, considering you obviously live at the community center.’

He blinked. ‘You know about that?’

‘Honey,’ Moira said, ‘Everyone knows about that.’

The second they were inside her apartment door, Nathan threw off his jacket and began unbuttoning the cuffs on his shirt, as if they were like manacles around his wrists. Moira watched; amused. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘What have you got?’ he asked, pulling the tail of his shirt out of his pants and sighing with relief. ‘Anything single malt?’

‘Just gin, I’m afraid. But I do a wicked G and T.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

In the kitchen, Moira poured their drinks then paused over his glass.  Do I, or don’t I?  Her conscience begged the question.  But he did need calming down.  He was much too wound up and suspicious of everything to spill his guts about the storm and Sally and Tony, and whatever other secret he and his fellow delinquents were keeping.  A Valium would do the job just nicely.

Decision made.

When she returned with the drinks, Nathan was sitting on her sofa, shoes discarded on the polished floor and shirt unbuttoned, but still clinging fetchingly to his long, lean frame. The sliver of exposed skin had become a generous chunk, and Moira found herself thinking, but it’s not my birthday!

She joined him on the sofa and pressed a glass into her hand. ‘Drink up.’

And he did. Practically downed it in a few gulps. Made a face toward the end, and there was a scary second where Moira thought he’d noticed the bitter taste of the diazepam, but if he suspected he’d been drugged, he didn’t say anything.

She took the glass from him and set it on the coffee table. Leaned her cheek on the heel of her hand; her elbow on the back of the couch. She was grateful his eyes were closed at that point, because she felt a tiny speck of saliva at the corner of her mouth. Jesus Christ, I’m drooling, she thought, wiping it away quickly with her free hand.  Any wonder, though. Look at him!  

And she did. Taking advantage of the fact that he’d more than likely fallen asleep, her eyes followed the natural progression from his high cheekbones and full lips, down his throat to his collarbones.  The open edges of his stark white shirt made his skin look golden in the muted light of her living room. She fought a compulsion to lean in and press her lips against his smooth chest.  God he’s good-looking, she thought. Too bad he knows it!  I’d better wake him up before I get caught doing something hideously embarrassing!

‘Nathan?’  

No answer.

‘You two-pot screamer! Are you drunk already?’ she laughed.

His eyes remained closed. He hadn’t moved.

Moira frowned. ‘Nathan?’

He didn’t respond to that, either. She reached out and shook him by the shoulder. ‘Come on, lad. This isn’t funny.  You’re freaking me out.’

She watched him, closely. Looking for any signs he was playing a prank on her. It would be just like him.

Wait, she thought. He’s not breathing!

She put a hand in front of his mouth and nose. Nothing. Not even the slightest puff of air. She grabbed the glass off the table and held it in front of his slightly open mouth.

No fog.

What the actual fuck?

Oh Christ, Moira thought, panic rising in her chest. I’ve killed him. He was allergic to Valium or something, and he didn’t know it, or he would have told me when I asked him if he wanted one earlier … and I drugged him without his knowledge and I’ve killed him!

‘Fuck … Nathan … you have to wake up. Please.’  She took him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘Wake up!’

When that didn’t work, the panic really started to set in. But so did the first aid training she’d been taught in her work as a prison officer. She jumped up from the couch and pushed the coffee table out of the way. Grabbing his legs, she spun them to the side, up onto the cushions, arranging him in a lying position on her sofa. It wasn’t the floor, but it would do.

She didn’t want to risk trying to move him to the floor in case she caused more damage, like a neck or spinal injury.  When he was flat out on his back, Moira hovered over him and took a deep breath.

‘Okay, here goes,’ she said, and began CPR.  Pinching his nose shut, she covered his mouth with hers and blew, thinking, this is not the way I wanted to be kissing him!  She gave him three quick breaths, like she was taught, then checked his pulse.

Nothing.

‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God.’  She wasn’t a religious person by any stretch of the imagination. It was more a case of panic getting the better of her than any kind of praying. ‘Please don’t be dead!’

She arranged her hands over his heart and began compressions.  Fifteen in all and then two more breaths. She counted as she worked. Checked his pulse again.  She almost sobbed with relief when she felt it – weak, but it was there.  She leaned in again to see if he was breathing …

And that’s when his eyes snapped open.

‘Oh fuck! Oh, thank God!’  Moira gasped. ‘Nathan, can you hear me?’

‘Of course, I can,’ he whispered, in a husky voice. ‘I’m not deaf.’

‘No, but you were dead.’ She checked his pulse again. ‘You were dead! I should call an ambulance, have you checked out properly.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.’  He started to sit up, but Moira pushed him down again.

‘What are you doing? You were just revived, for fuck’s sake! Lie down, take the load off!’

‘I’m really okay, Moira. Honestly.’  He closed his eyes. ‘Look … don’t call an ambulance. I’m fine. Anyway, I have … I have something to tell you.’

Wow, she thought. And I didn’t even have to break out the paddle!  Truthfully, she felt a bit cheated about that.  She’d been looking forward to a little light … persuasion.

‘What do you have to tell me?’ she asked, only just curbing the compulsion to ask, and does it have anything to do with two probation officers going missing and a third – snarky piece of work that he was – giving his resignation only weeks after starting the job?

‘The storm … it changed us. All of us.’ Nathan almost whispered. ‘Gave us … powers.’

Powers?!

‘Powers?’  Moira repeated. ‘I think I better call 999.  I think you’ve suffered hypoxia. That’s lack of oxygen to the brain.’

Then he said something she expected even less than his previous confession.

‘I’m immortal.’

‘What?’  

He started to sit up. This time she didn’t try to stop him. In truth, she was too stunned to do much of anything except stare in disbelief. ‘What?’

‘I can’t die.’

‘But you did die.’

‘What I mean is, I can’t stay dead.’  

‘You look terrible. Pale. You should lie down again. Rest.’

He ran a hand through his hair, which had finally resisted all the product and was standing on end. ‘I’m fine, really. Can I get a glass of water, though?’

‘Of course.’  

He waited. And chuckled. ‘You can leave me alone in the room, Moira. I’m not going to keel over on you again.’

‘Just checking.’

‘Come to think of it, why did I keel over in the first place?’

‘I … I don’t know,’ Moira lied. ‘You should see a doctor about that. It could be a heart thing.’ She backed into the kitchen, not willing to take her eyes off him, but not for the same reason as before!  ‘You know,’ she called from the other room, ‘I’ve heard of people just dropping dead from arrythmias and stuff like that. Or it could have been a stroke.’

‘Why would I have a stroke? I’m as fit as a horse. Bit lanky on it, but I’m healthy otherwise.’  

‘Like I said, I have no idea.’

She hated lying to him. She really did. It was on the tip of her tongue to confess what she’d done but … what would he do, then? Would he hate her? Would he refuse to talk about what happened on the day of the storm?  What had happened to Tony, or Sally?  There were too many variables. It was safer to lie.

She gave him the glass and watched him drink the water, a lot slower and more careful than he’d downed the tainted gin and tonic.  Does he suspect me? She wondered.  Does he even remember the taste of the G&T?  God, I should really shut up right now. What if one of his powers is that he can read my mind?

 Wow, Moira, taunted her inner voice. Pretty quick to believe him about that, weren’t you? Don’t you know when someone’s taking the piss? He’s obviously playing some kind of game with you. Cat and mouse. He knows you’re lying, so he’s concocted this big fantasy about being a superhero.  Don’t get sucked in! I know you fancy him, but …

Shut up, she thought to herself. Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!!

‘Moira?’  

‘Yeah?’

‘I feel a bit … funny.’

‘I told you, you need to go to the hospital. You wouldn’t listen to me.’

He chuckled, loosely. ‘No, not like that.’

‘Like what then?’

His green eyes appraised her, slowly. ‘That is a really nice dress … did I mention that?’

‘Yes, you did, as a matter of fact.’  What was he getting at?

‘Good because you look smokin’ hot tonight.  Like, seriously, if you weren’t my probation officer, I would have totally hit on you by now.’

She laughed, and felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘Well, thanks, that’s very sweet.’

‘But I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble, you know? That kind of thing, you could lose your job.’

He turned those gorgeous green eyes on her again. ‘And you’re the best one we’ve had yet. Haven’t even thought of killing you, once.’

What?!

‘What … sorry, what did you say?’

He burst out laughing. ‘I’m kidding!’ The laughing turned into a fit of coughing. He held a finger up as if to say wait, regrouped, and started again.  ‘I really was just kidding. But … I think I should warn you … we know why you’re here.’

‘We?’

‘All of us. We know. You’re supposed to find out what’s going on. You know, with the first two PO’s.’

The jig, as they say, was up.

‘H-how … where did you get that information?’

‘Kelly.’

‘Kelly … what … so that’s her power? She can read minds?’

‘Yup.’

‘So … you’ve known all along.’ Sigh.

‘Yup.’

Moira sank into the couch beside him. ‘So that’s that, then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you made me, didn’t you? I’m fucked. Any chance of finding out what happened now is … well, it never was, was it?’

He met her gaze, steadily. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I might be open to telling you some things.’ The corner of his mouth turned up in a sexy smirk.

‘Like what?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just … things.’

Moira stifled a grin, and narrowed her eyes at him, instead. ‘You’re gonna make me drag it out of you, aren’t you?’

He raised his eyebrows a little. ‘Sounds like fun.’  

And before she knew what she was doing, Moira was kissing him. The compulsion had won out. She wanted him so badly it was like a fire in her belly. A fire she couldn’t control and didn’t want to. A fire that reached right down into her thighs and swept her away. He began kissing her back - after a few seconds of being struck dumb, she imagined.  She barely felt his hand stroke her cheek; push her hair behind her ear. All she could focus on was his lips moving against hers; his tongue lightly flickering in her mouth; her heart pounding in her ears.  A lightheadedness set in. I have to breathe, she thought, but I don’t want this to ever stop!  

His hand slid down to her hip and coaxed her right leg over both of his. In one swift movement she was straddling him. She broke contact with his lips to get some much-needed oxygen and kissed her way over to his earlobe, which she took between her teeth and nibbled, gently. She felt him grow hard against her. ‘You like that, huh?’ she whispered, and bit down a tiny bit harder. His breath got uneven; raspy. She kissed him on the mouth again. His left hand, which had been resting on her hip, slid upward and cupped her breast through the slinky fabric of her dress and bra. His thumb grazed her nipple, and it was her turn to gasp and try and regroup.  But she’d lost track of what his other hand was doing. Until she felt it against her inner thigh, and then between them. He started rubbing gently, and she sank into him, her will to dominate proceedings shrinking with each stroke. His fingers sought out the waistband of her underwear and slipped inside. Moira gasped into his mouth and kissed him harder still.

She didn’t know if it was because she hadn’t been with anyone in months – almost a year, in fact – or because he was particularly good at what he was doing, but he had her bent almost double, leaning over him, burying her face in his dark curls and practically panting in less than a minute.

‘Moira,’ he whispered, ‘Check my jacket pocket. Left side.’

She nodded, still trying to catch her breath, and reached over for his jacket. Little ratbag, she thought. Looks like I wasn’t the only one who came prepared!

She raked her hair back from her face. ‘I’ll just put this on then, will I?’

He grinned. ‘Well, you could but I don’t think it would last very long, after that. But it’s up to you.’

She unwrapped the condom and unfastened his pants.  Slid a hand inside his jockey shorts and curled it around his shaft. He closed his eyes and bit down hard on his bottom lip. Catching him just below the head of his penis, she held him firmly until his face relaxed.

‘See,’ she said. ‘I have my ways. You won’t come until I want you to.’

He took a shuddery breath. ‘Yes, Miss.’

I think I like the sound of that, she thought.  ‘Okay,’ she said, once the condom was in place, ‘Let’s get that shirt off.’  

‘Well I think if I’m going to be practically naked here, it’s only fair that you lose an item of clothing.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah’.

‘You think that, do you?’

‘Damn straight.’

She climbed off his lap and stood up in front of him. Hiking up her dress, she caught the waistband of her underwear and tugged them down. They fell into a pool at her feet. ‘There. That better?’

He nodded. ‘It’s a start.’

‘Well, it’s all you’re getting, for now,’ she informed him.

He smirked and tilted his head. ‘You’re a tad bossy, you know that?’

‘Well, I was a prison guard.’

His eyes widened. ‘Really?’

‘Yep. You guys can have your secrets and I can have mine.’

‘I don’t have any secrets from you. Not now. Not anymore. I’ve told you everything I know.  Barry on the other hand …’

‘Simon is none of my concern right now,’ she said, kneeling between his legs. She leaned forward and grabbed the waistband of his pants. ‘Lift your butt.’

He did as he was told, and she tugged his pants down, pulling them off his legs and discarding them in the pile with his shoes. ‘Now for the shirt,’ she said.

‘Don’t you think this is awfully one-sided? I mean, here I am, naked, vulnerable …’

 ‘Shut up.’

‘Okay.’

When he was down to his jockey shorts, Moira stood up and looked him over, and for a brief moment, her bravado nearly slipped. He’s barely twenty-two years of age, she thought, and here I am, forty-three, closing in on menopause. What’s he going to think of me?  I’m not all firm like girls his age. Things haven’t … stayed in the same place. They’ve moved. Gravity gets you eventually. What if he thinks I’m gross?

‘Are you okay?’

‘I just … yeah, I’m fine.’ She gulped and reached up, pushing the strap of her dress down her shoulder.

‘Hey, you know, I was only kidding. If you’re nervous about this, you can leave the dress on.’

‘That’s hardly fair though, is it?’

‘I just … don’t want you to be uncomfortable. That’s all. You look terrified.’

‘I do?’

He nodded. ‘You talk a good game, tough and all that, but you’re a softie inside. You care what people think.’

He’s right, she realized. Damn him, he’s figured me out.

‘And you wanna know what I think?’

She shrugged. ‘All right … what do you think?’

‘I think you’re beautiful. I think I’ve never been more turned on in my short, sad life.’

Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

She dropped the dress and watched him watch her. He didn’t lose his erection so that was something. Maybe he is telling the truth, she thought.  She let the bra drop to the floor with the dress.

‘Sensational,’ he said, in a husky voice that didn’t sound quite like the cocky delinquent she knew.

‘Great,’ she said, with a nervous smile. ‘Now let’s get those jocks of yours off so I can shag you senseless.’

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Review: The Blade Itself

by Wardog

Tuesday, 01 April 2008Wardog is really fucking impressed.~

This was another of my Hay-on-Wye One Pound Bargains (the first being, of course,

Locke Lamora

) except it's been gathering dust under my bed for the past six months. What can I say, the cover was a bit lame and the blurb on the back made it sound a bit generic and, let's face it, it was available in bulk via an outlet booksellers on the Welsh Border for less than my breakfast croissant so how good could it be? Well I'm pretty much kicking myself for the delay because the answer is bloody good actually. Bloody bloody good. Possibly the best fantasy I've read for a very very long time.

Into a cocked hat with you, Mr Locke Lamora. This is the Real Deal.

The Blade Itself, which is the first part of a trilogy because fantasy cannot be anything else although it gets points from me by not being a fucking septology, has three main protagonists, and the story unfolds through each of their perspectives. They are: Captain Jezel dan Luthar, a shallow and feckless swordsman in the King's Own, Logen Ninefingers, a battle-weary barbarian and Sand dan Glokta, a crippled and bitter Inquisitor who was horribly tortured during the war. So much so GRRM I know, but here it really really works. The POV switching is deft and absorbing and there's a genuine difference in narration and perception between the three characters - Glokta's sections are dominated by his sarcastic interior monologue and Jezel's actually seem to pout and whinge at you:

He had always assumed that everybody loved him, had never really had cause to doubt he was a fine man, worthy of the highest respect. But Ardee didn't like him, he saw it now, and that made him think. Apart from the jaw, of course, and the money and the clothes, what was there to like?

The stories interweave but only occasionally overlap; however the fleeting opportunities to see a character you've grown familiar with through the eyes of another are fascinating and serve to deepen your understanding of both characters in a quite subtle ways. It's also a world-building winner because knowledge of the world (which seems quite detailed but, thankfully, is never presented in those indigestible chunks so popular with fantasy writers) filters down to you gradually through the different character's responses and preoccupations. When you first see the city the other characters inhabit through the eyes of the barbarian, for example, it's startling and arresting and gives you a whole new insight into something you've pretty much taken for granted throughout the book so far. If Abercrombie's technique can be faulted at all (and I hate myself for even mentioning it), it's that he's presented his three protagonists so effectively that his occasional deviations into other characters (and to be fair, these are rare) seem jarring and I often found myself skimming in order to get back to the people I cared about as quickly as possible.

The secondary cast consist of a finely tuned assortment of the types of people you might expect to find in this kind of book: a man of common birth striving for advancement and recognition in the King's Own, a scheming Arch-Inquisitor, a cantankerous old man who may or may not be (but probably is) the all-powerful First of the Magi, a feral slavegirl, grasping nobles, pretentious officers and corrupt officials. The world they inhabit is dark and gritty (typical low fantasy fare in fact): the book is set in the Union, a sprawling confederacy of disparate countries (presumably an analogue to Europe) united under a, in this case, completely weak and hopeless King and a parliament of hereditary, bickering nobles. The Blade Itself concentrates mainly on establishing its characters and their position within the larger events taking place on the fringes of their awareness: there's clearly going to be A Big War although the details are as hazy to the reader as they are to the characters. Bethod, ruthless Barbarian king cementing power in The North, the Emperor Uthman al-Dosht eyeing up The East.

I think this may be The Blade Itself's only arguable weakness: it's pretty much a 400 page prologue. There is a sense of a gathering storm but there's very little elucidation of the over-arcing plot, which I presume will focus on the Big War through the eyes of the individuals caught up within it. This is not to say the book is devoid of excitement or tension, it's just that if you want to get into the thick of things straight away ... well ... why the hell are you reading fantasy trilogies? It may be a slow build but it it's so damnably well done that it's a pay off all on its own and I found myself so absorbed by the characters that I didn't care it was primarily set up for the books to come.

The other thing to note here is that my crude summary in no way does the book justice. Its generic premise and easily recognisable fantasy world are actually strengths: Abercrombie manipulates the usual fantasy tropes so skilfully that the book is both a delicate riff on the epic fantasy genre itself and an epic fantasy masterpiece in its own right. Its sly playfulness is one of the (many) pleasures of the book:

"How's the book?" asked Jezal. "The Fall of the Master Maker, in three volumes. They say it's one of the great classics ... Full of wise Magi, stern knights with mighty swords and ladies with mightier bosoms. Magic, violence and romance, in equal measure. Utter shit."

To some extent it reminds me of The Lies of Locke Lamora but only because they both seem to share a similar self-referentiality when it comes to the mainstays and expectations of the genre, and a healthy affection for the word fuck. If I was feeling momentous I'd dub it post-modern fantasy. But actually I think Abercrombie is better, particularly because he has a fine ear for dialogue and, although there are plenty of irreverent fast-talkers to be found within, it is at the very least possible to distinguish between them. His characters are complex, complicated and far from sympathetic but nevertheless they feel utterly and convincingly human. Jezal may be a shallow and selfish waste of space but you applaud his occasional moments of heroism. Glokta tortures people for a living and yet still you root for him. And although Logen, the thinking man's barbarian, was initially the least interesting of the three to me, after a while I really came to appreciate Abecrombie's take on this fantasy staple. Logen is a killer exhausted with killing, living in a world that has no other use for him:

He could have bragged and boasted, and listed the actions he'd been in, the Named Men he'd killed. He couldn't say now when the pride had dried up. It had happened slowly. As the wars became bloodier, as the causes became excuses, as the friends went back to the mud, one by one. "I've fought in three campaigns," he began. "In seven pitched ballets. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I've fought in the middle of the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I've been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I've known little else. I've seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that's far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper. I've fought ten single combats, and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I've been ruthless and brutal, and a coward. I've stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I've run away myself more than once. I've pissed myself with fear. I've begged for my life. I've been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I've no doubt the world would be a better place if I'd been killed years ago, but I haven't been and I don't know why."

Logen, if anything and unlikely as it sounds, is (at the moment at least) the moral centre of the book. Although his battle cry is "I'm still alive" his life of violence has led him to a point where mere survival is no longer sufficient and the decisions he makes over the course of the book are based on an emergent, personal moral code. For the battle weary Logen, fighting has become something he will no long do out of necessity or for profit: he is fighting for a cause. Jezel, by contrast, in training for the fencing Contest, fights for glory and even then he only really puts any effort in because he wants to impress a girl. And Glokta, who does terrible things to people over the course of the book and knowingly allows himself to be used as a tool by the ambitious Arch Lector Sult, too physically and emotionally broken to really take any pleasure in survival at all, has no idea what motivates him to do the things he does.

That same question came into his head, over and over, and he still had no answer. Why do I do this? Why?

Glokta is most certainly the most difficult character in the book. Really, he can be thought of as a little more than a villain but the agony of his day to day life is described in such detail, and with such bitter wit, that it's very hard not to feel sympathetic towards him. However, although he's a fantastic character, I cannot help but wonder if his portrayal is entirely successful. The fact of the matter is, he kills and hurts people without remorse or regret and yet it's remarkably easy to forget it as you get drawn into the story. You might say this is yet another strength of the characterisation but I think that if you are going to find yourself responding positively to a character who is a torturer then you have to be able to do so with full knowledge of what that character is capable of doing. You might also say that this is a problem with me as a reader and that I shouldn't need to see constant and gruesome teeth-extraction scenes to remind me that somebody is a Bad Man but I actually suspect it's something to do with the nature of fiction itself (yeah, heaven forefend it was me).

Seriously though, and with all due self-irony, it's easy to forget - especially when it comes to fantasy where getting completely subsumed in the world is an expected part of the reading process (or "fun" if you're feeling generous) - the artificiality of fiction. We do not, however we might wish to pretend otherwise, respond to fictional people and situations as if they were real. We do not grieve for the fictional dead. We don't care about the billions of lives lost on Alderan, we just think it's really damn cool and evil that a whole planet got blown up by Darth Vader. Similarly, the people Glokta tortures have no narrative presence of their own. Therefore, it's hard to care that horrible, horrible things happen to them and it's hard to condemn Glokta for perpetrating the horrible horrible things. The issue here is not about morality it's about narrative: it's not whether or not the reader should be able to forgive Glotka for his unforgivable actions, it's why they should be so easy to forget.

But to bring this back to where it's supposed to be: The Blade Itself is an exceptionally accomplished and, indeed brilliant, debut. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Just one more thing: Fantasy Rape Watch

Women raped: 0

Somebody give the man a big gold star.

A brief aside on the subject of women in The Blade Itself since it's something that seems to be preoccupying us here at Fb: women tend to be peripheral to the novel as a whole. However, given the world, this seems entirely appropriate. The few female characters who do have parts to play are well-written, interesting and can hold their own against the men. None of them get their pale breasts fondled by rough barbarian hands. Win!Themes:

Fantasy Rape Watch

,

Books

,

Joe Abercrombie

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Arthur B

at 23:17 on 2008-03-31

I've fought ten single combats, and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons.

And with that, you've sold me on it. I know you said you'd lend it to me, but I'm tempted to just go to the Works and pick it up - ISTR that they have some cheap copies going there - since if you give it to me I'll want to keep it and then we will have to fight.

permalink

-

go to top

Wardog

at 10:37 on 2008-04-02I feel absolutely evangelical about it - I would walk down Iffley Road just to give it to you, I think it's THAT good.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 15:19 on 2009-09-22So, I've finally gotten around to reading it a year and a half later and I'm pretty impressed.

I agree that the book is let down by the fact that it's a prologue, but I don't think it's let down that much. It's clearly the setup for Bayaz getting an adventuring party together to go to the edge of the world, but it almost never explicitly focuses on that, and always makes sure there's heaving, groaning piles of other stuff happening at the same time to make up for it like the war in the North and the fencing contest. If Robert Jordan had written this it would be 400 pages exclusively about Bayaz and his companions shopping for travelling gear.

Personally, I don't think the things Glotka does are that forgettable - we get constant little reminders of the lives he's destroyed throughout the book, like the bit where he casually mentions that the man he wrecks right in the opening chapters has "moved up north", and the implications of the responsibility he's given at the end of the book is pretty horrifying. Also, Glotka constantly thinks about his own torture, because his thought processes end up warping everything and making them all about him and the fact that he was tortured, but whilst he's a self-centred prick who can't see beyond his own pain I think at the same time his pains and tribulations are also a nice reminder for the reader about the implications of what Glotka does. That said, I think this is a point where people's interpretations will vary.

Oh, and on "Women raped: 0", I'm not sure that's

completely

true. I think it is pretty clear that in her past Ferro was either raped or in dire peril of being raped, but I think it's allowable because a) it's backstory, backstory inherently less real than stuff that actually happens onstage, and b) she actually acts like someone who has been brutally victimised in her formative years and then spent years as an outlaw running a guerilla campaign against the authorities. Pretty classy work on JA's part.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 15:22 on 2009-09-22Oh, there was one thing that got to me though - the world didn't quite hang together in a coherent manner, Abercrombie seemed to want to have the Renaissance-era Holy Roman Empire bordering Viking-era Scandanavia, and there were some puzzling things that came out of that. I'm all for fantasy worlds not sweating it too much when it comes to emulating a particular time period - deliberate anachronism can be pretty fun - but the Northmen don't know about crossbows?

Seriously?

That's the sort of weapon where once it's discovered it gets propagated

fast

because it's too useful not to adopt.

On the flipside, I did like the fact that Logen and Bethod and the other Northmen have no doubt that Bayaz is who he says he is, whilst in the Union they all freak out about it. It implies either that things are wilder and woolier and more magical in the North, or that time actually passes more slowly there; I'd be interested to see which.

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 23:27 on 2009-09-22It's pretty much standard in Fantasy for you to have Renaissance city-states, Vikings, Knights, Egyptians and Samurai rubbing shoulders in the same setting (often along with Victorian street urchins and spacemen).

It's also pretty standard for "civilized" people to be all "no no, the big dark evil is totally not coming" while "simpler" people are like "zomg".

Just once I'd like the civilised people to be right. After all, most things that people Don't Believe In Any More are - y'know - genuinely not real.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 00:50 on 2009-09-23

It's also pretty standard for "civilized" people to be all "no no, the big dark evil is totally not coming" while "simpler" people are like "zomg".

Again, a setting feature which made me genuinely wonder whether time passes more slowly the further you get from the central nation in the book. If 500 years have passed in the Union whilst only 15 have passed in the utter North a lot of this stuff makes sense: the Northmen don't know about crossbows because from their point of view they were only invented days ago, the Union have forgotten about magic and the Dark One because to them it's ancient history whereas to those at the periphery it's recent news, and Bayaz can have an influence on the life of the Union spanning generations because all he has to do is step beyond the mountains and time, for him, slows to a crawl.

This is almost certainly not the case but it would be fun to imagine a world where it was true.

permalink

-

go to top

Niall

at 11:25 on 2009-09-23

it would be fun to imagine a world where it was true.

I believe this is the concept underlying Jo Walton's Lifelode. (Also some short stories by Stephen Baxter, eg "PeriAndry's Quest", "Climbing the Blue".)

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 22:49 on 2009-09-23I vaguely remember being absolutely fascinated by a slightly-outside-my-syllabus lecture (weren't they always the best kind?) about the Rus, a slightly mysterious pagan people from the northern Volga who pop up from time to time in Byzantine texts and who, the lecturer argued quite convincingly, later ambled vaguely westwards and arrived in Scandinavia just in time to become the Vikings. Maybe Abercrombie vaguely remembered a similar lecture.

Studying ancient and medieval history totally ruined the whole fantasy genre for me. I can't read any specimen without getting incredibly frustrated by the many many ways the fantasy world at hand would never under any circumstances work the way the author wants it to. (Not in a 'No, there can't be dragons' way, just in a 'No, if you had domesticated dragons it would completely revolutionize long-distance transport which would internationalize urban élite culture and thus destablize the ruling theocracy, not to mention the implications for agriculture...' way.) It makes me rather sad.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 23:12 on 2009-09-23This is the sort of thing which was simply never a problem with pulp fantasy of the Howard/Leiber/Clark Ashton Smith vein - because that genre was dominated by short story, no particular story revealed enough of the world that you could see where the seams were. Leiber's stories, for example, are all set in the environs of Lankhmar, and because you never really get to see the wider context of where Lankhmar fits in with the global political and economic scene none of that stuff matters even slightly and you can just forget about it and have fun.

Brick-sized novels tend to be trickier, especially since the instinct to write a fantasy story longer than 50 pages seems intimately tied to a love of excess worldbuilding. The more detail you provide about the setting, the more you reveal of the economic and political underpinnings, and 99% of the time they're going to turn out to be made of wet cardboard and string (because coming up with a convincing society from scratch is horrifyingly difficult).

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 01:07 on 2009-09-24(Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the Union isn't based on Byzantium but the Renaissance-era HRE, so Abercrombie almost certainly isn't thinking of the Rus. The Union appears to incorporate at least the southern extremities of not-Scandanavia, for starters, and there's an utter lack of Greek-sounding names.)

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 11:38 on 2009-09-24

'No, if you had domesticated dragons it would completely revolutionize long-distance transport which would internationalize urban élite culture and thus destablize the ruling theocracy, not to mention the implications for agriculture...' way

Ironically, I often find that sort of thing actually balances out quite well.

"But if you could do that, it would totally revolutionise agriculture..."

"... which sort of explains why 90% of your country isn't covered in farmland so - fair enough then."

permalink

-

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 22:52 on 2009-09-24

This is the sort of thing which was simply never a problem with pulp fantasy of the Howard/Leiber/Clark Ashton Smith vein...

Perhaps I should try mining that vein. Where's a good place to start?

... the Union isn't based on Byzantium but the Renaissance-era HRE...

D'oh, yes, you did say exactly that in the first place and my brain perpetrated an unhelpful act of lumping all post-Roman imitations of the Roman empire together.

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Perhaps I should try mining that vein. Where's a good place to start?

Any of the Fantasy Masterworks reprints of their work is decent (as is Lord Dunsany, if you want something a bit more poetic... and come to think of it, their compilation of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories is pretty good).

Be aware that Leiber's output is a bit more variable than the others - the earlier Lankhmar stories are generally better than the later ones - and the Masterworks reprints of Lankhmar put the books in their internal chronological order, not the order of publication. So it's worth skipping to the stories with the earlier dates of publication when dipping into those.

permalink

-

go to top

Ash

at 20:49 on 2011-03-15

time passes more slowly the further you get from the central nation in the book

Which raises the question, how does this work exactly? If 20 years inside makes 1 year outside, what happens when you cross on the border? Do you get ripped apart? Can you cross on the border? What about the cycle of day and night? Does one side have extremely long/short days and nights? If not, why not?

I don't know, it seems that it poses more problems than it solves.

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 22:36 on 2011-03-15I don't for a moment think that the Abercrombieverse actually works that way (it seems a pretty out-there way of describing what boils down to a bit of cod-fantasy world-handwaving) but I don't think it would actually be *that* hard to deal with, the same thing happens in the real world on a much smaller scale (time is slower in strong gravitational fields so clocks really do run faster in orbit than near the earth - GPS satellites need to be calibrated to take this into account). As long as there's a relatively smooth gradient, it shouldn't matter when you move from one to the other.

If it's got sharper edges, then you're dealing with something more like fairyland or Narnia - it's basically a metaphor for the way in which things can seem to change radically when we are separated from them for what appears to us to be a short time (this happens to me in real life all the time, you'll meet somebody you haven't seen for a while and they'll turn out to have had a baby or become a vicar while your back was turned).

But it's fairly clear that the world of The Blade Itself does not actually work that way anyway, so the point is rather moot.

permalink

-

go to top

Andy G

at 23:51 on 2011-03-15Just re-read this review. Two things leapt out at me.

Firstly, I must read these books again.

Secondly, it was Grand Moff Tarkin who blew up the whole planet, not Darth Vader!

permalink

-

go to top

Arthur B

at 00:24 on 2011-03-16And Tarkin did it wearing comfy slippers too.

permalink

-

go to top

Wardog

at 09:33 on 2011-03-16Incidentally, I don't think you're allowed to have a 'verse if you name has more than 2 syllables in it. Maybe it should be the Joeverse.

permalink

-

go to top

Ash

at 20:01 on 2011-03-16

The point is rather moot.

Sorry, I just like to overthink things.

permalink

-

go to top

Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 20:21 on 2011-03-16

Sorry, I just like to overthink things.

Fortunately, that's the raison d'être of this website.