Outro: The Serial Novel

Twenty-Four

Stalling for Time

"Dearest kind gentlemen: Please lower the toilet seat in consideration of our lady patrons."


Life is filled with seemingly arcane items that keep popping into your thoughts, and one of mine is the notice in the bathroom at the Java and Clay. In a world where so many are happy to hammer you over the head with rules and regulations, this little ceramic sign is an oasis of civility. It invites men to be courteous, and offers them the chance to feel like Arthurian knights for the simple act of lowering a ring of porcelain. And I would bet that it actually works. It’s a chilly Friday in late January, a week after our blessed ski trip, and I’m meeting Ruby for another session. The Java and Clay is a particular favorite. The back forty is a full-blown workshop where patrons glaze pre-made vases and platters and pick them up the next day, fully kilned. The front is more like someone’s living room, including a large gas fireplace with stone facing. When I come here solo, I end up on a stool before the front window, which affords a vista of Harborview Drive and the Jerisich Dock. The bonus is an occasional bald eagle sighting – once, a mere thirty feet above the sidewalk, as if he were headed to The Tides for a sandwich.

My everything bagel goes off in the toaster just as Ruby pops through the door, looking all Debbie Reynolds in a white jacket and sienna scarf. She’s also had her hair bobbed, which multiplies her cuteness sevenfold.

“Girlfriend!” she cries, and we go for a greeting with all the trimmings: wraparound hug, continental cheek-kissing, everything short of high-fives. She fetches a cappuccino, then joins me in matching armchairs before the fire.

“God! I just want to live here. It’s so much nicer than my place.”

“Tish-tosh!” I try to say with a straight face. “I’ve been to your place.”

“Yes,” she rebuts. “But this place is in Gig Harbor.”

“Point and… match! The hair is darling. I just want to adopt you.”

“Thanks! I wanted it real short for my Mexican cruise.”

“Excuse me? I mean, excuse me?”

Ruby bats her lashes, all Betty Boop. “Yay-ess! Harry got a nice fat bonus, so next week our ports of call are Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo.”

“San Lucas?”

“Yes. We’re on a first-name basis.”

“Extraordinary! I’m jealous already. Does the ship have karaoke?”

“You have such a one-track mind. And yes, they do. It’s the first thing I checked.” She rubs her hands together, all Cruella DeVille. “A whole new crowd of victims for my siren call!”

I laugh, in a perfectly normal manner, but then I’m drifting, my gaze fixed on the rust-colored hands of the mantelpiece clock. And then Ruby is saying something that fades in and out of my frequency.

“Channy? Are you somewhere in the 253 area code?”

I shake my head around, all Rin-Tin-Tin.

“Um… um… sorry. I’m a little wary of these stories today. Well. Mine, mostly. This might sound silly, but, as we got further and further into our little meetings, I began to believe that, if I told the story exactly right, maybe this time it would turn out… differently.”

Ruby takes in my anxiety, folding her hands over her knee. “Would it help if I went first?”

“Would you? Oh! I forgot my bagel. Hold on.”

Ruby laughs, all Fran Dreischer. “Jewish food for a Jewish tragedy. Oy gevalt! I’ll go visit the restroom.”

“Be sure and put the seat down,” I say. Disappearing around the corner, Ruby flashes one half of a puzzled expression.


Next: Scootie Surprise

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1

Image by MJV

Outro: The Serial Novel

Twenty-three

Skiing with Kai

Kai is already family, so there’s no need for the usual filters. He even joins me for dinner with the Craigs – the closest thing I’ve got to meeting the parents – and passes with flying colors. (For John, a deployment in Iraq buys instant acceptance.)

For New Year’s, he takes me to a slick restaurant in Seattle’s Queen Anne district: candlelight dinner followed by a jazz combo. I took just enough lessons during the retro-swing thing that I manage to keep up with him. I recall what he said about those high school musicals, and it shows – he’s a seriously good lead, with a sense of panache and rhythm that you just can’t teach.

But then there’s sex. I am most definitely ready to end my forced celibacy, but Kai seems hesitant. I can’t rush him and I can’t blame him; I was, after all, his best friend’s wife.

My odds, however, are getting much better. Our sporting goods Fezziwig is rather fond of lending his ski cabin to employees – in fact, sees it as an investment, since it allows his workers to try out the products that they’re selling. We are, in fact, completely decked out with demo models from three of Scott’s stores, tooling along the Columbian River Gorge in an SUV, headed for Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Our pilot is Conrad, assistant manager at the Olympia store, and a former member of Kai’s Guard unit. He’s a hybrid of superhero and fratboy – tall, blond, broad-shouldered, square-jawed and boisterous of expression. His girlfriend is Becky, a software engineer bearing no trace of yuppiedom. She seems extraordinarily genuine – which is, I think, a vastly underrated quality. She also projects that rare duality of quiet-but-friendly, which makes you want to tell her things that you wouldn’t tell anyone else. She’d make a great psychiatrist.

Our other passengers are Shari and Ruby, and though I’m feeling guilty for hogging the guest list, I’ve been hoping for just such a chance to bring my two confidantes together. (The original idea was to bring Harry, too, but with the nasty winter weather he’s booked up with work.) Shari’s a veteran skier who will undoubtedly leave us all in her powder, whereas Ruby’s only been twice. I can’t imagine her being truly bad at anything, however, so I’m sure she’ll find a way to keep up.

We park at a large complex, and find that Scott’s cabin is more like an apartment. Given his passion for elegance, I guess this is a little surprising. The place is nice, though, and reaches for that cabinesque feel with an upstairs loft, replete with loggy furniture and stacks of board games. The living room sports a lovely stone fireplace (fueled by actual wooden logs, stacked on the balcony) and a round, radiant blondewood table.

But the real priority, for yours truly, is to track down some privacy, so I duck downstairs and head for the end of the hallway. There I find a master bedroom with a king-size bed. Lest there be claim-jumpers, I flop my suitcase on the center of the bed and hang my ballcap on the outside doorknob. Conrad, toting baggage into the front bedroom, catches me in the act and flashes a knowing grin.

Trying to force the blood back from my face, I return to the living room, which is echoing with sorority chatter. I find Kai coming my way with two glasses of wine, which just about wipes out all of my remaining wishes. After making his delivery, he smiles at something over my head. I turn to find Ruby and Shari leaning over the loft railing like Southern debutantes. Ruby barks like a drill sergeant: “Kai! About face, soldier!”

“Ma’am yes ma’am!” says Kai, and executes a precise military spin.

When I turn back, I find four knockers resting on the railing like flesh-colored water balloons. I respond with a suitably girlish scream.

Ruby and Shari return their shirts to standard civilian position and are about to fill the room with more giggling when they’re drowned out by Kai, who has collapsed on the table, crippled by laughter. I scale his body till I’m riding him like a cowgirl, slapping him on the back.

“What? You loony Sherpa – what!?”

Kai has lost the power of speech, but manages to gesture at a mirror on the back wall, which currently holds a portrait of Ruby and Shari’s puzzled faces.


We’re both pretty knocked out from the drive, so the question of sex isn’t really a question. But this is beginning to worry me, because I don’t want this thing to grow into some intimidating obstacle. So I play the good girl, put on the Presbyterian flannels, but I indulge in as many snuggles as the law will allow, and I certainly like the feel of the parts against which I am rubbing.

The next day is a slow start, thanks mostly to the srawberry pancakes served up by Shari, which have about the same effect as tranquilizer darts. Still, we rouse ourselves in time for six hours of near-perfect skiing, and turn out to be quite a cohesive unit, despite our differing levels of expertise. Shari’s being cautious with her trick knee, so she’s slumming in the intermediates – and treating them like her own private NASCAR tracks. On the fifth run, I fire off the chairlift, duck my head, tuck my knees and hit the straightaways like a one-woman bullet train, then shuss into the lift line to find Shari, not even breathing hard, looking like she could have ordered and consumed a caffe borgia during her wait. On the other hand, with her height and her lime green jester’s hat, she makes a dandy gathering spot.

Conrad surprises no one by being our usual runner-up, with Becky working hard to keep him in her sights. Ruby’s a consistent last, as expected, but her dancer’s grace keeps her from falling, even once, so our waits are not long.

Kai and I are the middle children, and an interesting study in contrast. Either one of us could probably reach the bottom more quickly, but we’ve got other items on our agendas. Kai had lots of lessons as a kid, so he’s after style points, carving lovely esses down the flats, navigating the moguls like a schoolboy coloring inside the lines, knees relaxed, legs neatly parallel. I, meanwhile, am after as much low-level air as I can gather, searching the edges for those little ramp-trails and running the tops of the moguls, trusting that I’ll find a landing spot on the other side. My legs shoot out every which way, like a dog on ice, as I battle for balance, and I add three festive crash-and-burns to my life list. I’m relating one of these over Conrad’s hearty steak dinner as we decompress at the cabin.

“Okay. So I found the snowboarding ramps at the end of the Glen Ridge run?”

“Oh Channy!” says Becky. “You didn’t.”

“You kiddin’ me? I had to. So the first ramp, it felt like I was heading straight up a freakin’ wall. But once I cleared the edge, the momentum pulled me forward and I landed smooth as can be, almost as if I knew what I was doing! The next… object… was a deep drop into a fairly innocent-looking scoop-ramp. My takeoff was fine, but sometime in mid-flight I realized that I was going to land in the middle of a second scoop-ramp, and I freaked. My body went into a flying fetal position, I sluffed the second ramp, flew through the air fully sideways, and managed to land on my ass. Then I caught an edge, which sent me into a spin, like one of those whirling sparklers that you nail to a fencepost. The landing area was about twenty yards long, iced up from traffic, so I slid and slid and slid until I came to a stop right in front of the lift line, where fifty skiers gave me a rousing ovation.”

“Oh!” says Ruby. “That is harsh.”

“Hey, sistah. Any applause is good applause, right?”

“No. This is not what they mean when they say, ‘Break a leg.’”

“However,” says Kai. “The next time, she got it perfect.”

“You went back?” says Shari.

“Oh yeah,” says Conrad. “Look who’s talking, Dale Earnhardt.”

Shari lets out a big whiskey-laugh. “I’m a big girl, honey. You just ain’t gonna beat certain combinations of mass and gravity.”

I take the opening to lift my beer in salute. “To gravity!”

“Without it,” says Kai, “skiing would really suck!”


We wrap up the evening with a board game that requires entirely too much mental acumen. I discover that 1) I am quite good at backwards spelling, and 2) I cannot identify a hummed song to save my life (which, given my profession, is downright shameful). Come the last round, as Ruby and I stand on the brink of victory, I mistake “Battle Hymn of the Republic” for “Swanee.” I also take this to indicate that I have had enough wine for the evening. Conrad wins the game by properly identifying a dachsund that Becky has fashioned from modeling clay.

The evening is a caravan of laughter, and it floats Kai to my cave of seduction, where I intend to get on with the gettin’ on. For a first session, it’s remarkably natural. I spend most of my time on top, as I imagined I would, arranging things as I like them. The sense of control is a potent aphrodisiac, and reminds me of my high school passions with the geek boys. Perhaps Kai is a geek boy – I’d lay money on it – but he has most definitely graduated. It’s this subdermal strata of strength and curiosity, the power you must have in order to accede power. To let the lady be on top. If I’m not careful, I’m going to fall in love with this boy. I feel the surges as he works up to orgasm and stiffens, and I collapse over him, my hair falling to his chest.

“That was beautiful, Kai.”

“Yes, it was.”


The next morning, things are different. Or perhaps it’s just that Kai is in charge of breakfast: omelets with linguisa and caramelized onions. But the feeling of separation is more than culinary. He’s not reacting as a lover should. He’s expending all his energy on the others, playing the host. I’m thinking, No! Come inside with me. Let’s make a separate room, all to ourselves.

On the slopes, he doesn’t seem all that concerned with keeping me in his sights, more apt to drift his own way and meet me at the jester’s hat. Then he starts taking the lift up with others. Two, three months from now, this would be normal – but not the first morning-after. I want to take last night’s warmth and hoard it, drown in it. I catch a lift with Shari, and watch the square of Kai’s jacketed shoulder thirty feet in front of us.

“Were you being active last night, young lady?”

“Yes.”

Shari chides me with a laugh. “That’s all I get?”

“It was our first.”

She turns sharply, causing one of her jester tentacles to slap me across the forehead.

“Goddamn, sister. I figured you two were full-blown rabbits by now.”

“Such are the assumptions in a horndog karaoke bar.”

“Amen, sister. Although I guess you do have some serious stuff to work around.”

I’m chewing on the finger of my glove. “Ruby’s told you?”

“Um, yeah. Is that all right?”

“Yeah. It’s fine. I am just about to the end of my sad, sad story.”

“Good.”

“So. Do I ask him why he’s pulling away already?”

She takes a strand of hair and twirls it around a finger. Everybody’s got a thinking device.

“The day-after retreat is common enough – so hunter-gatherer – but this matter of boinking your best friend’s wife is quite the complication. You can apply all the logic you want, but there’s still going to be some guilt. You, however, are the best diplomat I know – Lord knows how you balance all those singerly egos. I’m sure you’ll find a subtle, non-threatening way to bring it up. You need to find out if he’ll trust you enough to talk about these things.”

“Damn!” I say. “You’re thorough.”

“Those who can’t do, give advice. You going left?”

“Yep.”

“Groovy. I’m right.”

“Have a nice sprint, Jean-Claude.”

Shari grins. “Hey, some people get laid, others get to be first down the hill.”

“Deal!”

We slide off the chair, and I swoop around the lift tower, looking for Sherpas. Alas, he’s already a hundred feet down the hill.

“I don’t think so,” I mutter, pretending I’m Deniro. I shoot down the hill, recalling the field of shallow moguls around the first bend. Kai is going to carve them in loving snake tracks. I’m going straight over the top. And that’s how I’ll catch him.

I’m flying my third mogul, splendidly out of control, when I spot a dark figure, taking a hairpin turn straight into my path. I pivot sideways, hoping to grind my landing, but I catch an edge and topple sideways, taking out Kai with an NHL-level body check. We explode into the next tier of moguls, our skis locked up, and tumble five-and-a-half more times before we come to a frosty stop. I scrape the powder from my face to find a booted foot inches from my nose, and pray to God it’s not mine. Kai groans, and pushes to an elbow to ID his assailant.

“Channy? What the hell?!”

I give a repentant look. “I was trying to catch up, and I got a little… exuberant.”

“Exuberant? More like homicidal!”

He sees that I’m not laughing, and he pats my cheek.

“Hey Channy. I’m kidding.”

“Oh.” I tuck my skis so I can sit up. “I sorta… felt like you were avoiding me.”

“Ah, geez!” he says. “I am so bad at this. I’m not used to being part of a couple. I guess I was hanging back, waiting for instructions.”

I give him a meaningful look. “Why don’t you start by helping me up?”

He grabs both my hands and pulls me to my feet.

“And now you can kiss me, in a sweet, schoolboy fashion.”

Which he does.

“And the rest of the day, you can pretty much worship my every move.”

“Gotcha.”

“Well, not really. But just… stay connected with me. If you’re off in a corner, playing backgammon with Becky, just look my way once in a while, make eye contact. This is sweet, valuable stuff, these beginnings of things. Spend them wisely. Plus, the first day-after makes us chicks very jumpy and vulnerable. Now – wanna ski?”

“Yeah,” he says. But why don’t you go first?”

“Smart boy,” I say, and I’m off.


Next: Story Stall

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1

Image by MJV

Outro: The Serial Novel

Twenty-two

Ruby

Scootie’s building had one of those old-style freight elevators, and one side of the shaft had windows looking out toward Central Park. When the inside window met up with a shaft window, it created a strobe effect, like a silent-era film. The feature that day was a maple at the edge of the park, going absolutely berserk with scarlets, pumpkins, siennas and mustards. (Scootie was having a distinct effect on my color-vocabulary.)

When I got out, I heard a sound like a reverse heartbeat, like trochaic verse: thump-thump, thump-thump, On the shores of Gitchigoomy. Making my way down the hall, I realized it was coming from Scootie’s loft, and opened the door to find him tossing a violet spheroid against the wall.

“Wednesday Thursday Friday!” I shouted.

“Hi,” he said, barely missing a beat. “What did you say?”

“WTF!”

Blank stare.

“What the fuck!”

“Right! Here: I demonstrate.”

He took a tube of pink acrylic, squeezed a teaspoon onto the tennis ball and fired away. The ball struck the canvas with a splat and bounced on the dropclothed floor. Scootie scooped it up nicely and fired again, then caught it and set it in a dogbowl at his feet. He rose from his stool and stalked my way with gloppy rainbow hands. “Give me a hug!”

“Not on your life, Van Gogh!”

“You love me, you love my art, bebe.” He held his hands behind his back and gave me a schoolboy kiss.

“It’s like dating a fucking paint monster.” I retreated to a clean-looking table, ten feet away. “Okay, mojo man. Give me the game plan.”

He stood and made a game-show sweep toward the canvas. “First, I covered the surface with black gesso. Then I took one of my coaster creatures and lined it out in masking tape. Now I’m playing paintball until I get a nice thick coating of rainbow splats and circles. Once it dries, I remove the masking tape, with some assistance from my X-Acto knife, and ba-boom! An eerie black figure, staring out from a Jackson Pollock-Bjorn Borg carnaval.”

I followed the tape-strip drowning in tennis strokes and clucked my tongue. “You’re a marvel. I don’t know five people combined who have as much creative juice as you.”

Scootie surveyed his cloud of splats, and I knew exactly what was going on behind those obsidian irises. He was forecasting that perfect moment, that split second when the work took its form, and it was time to set the creature free. But I didn’t want him drifting too far, because I intended to steal him away from Mother Art, at least for the evening.

“Hey, boybee – snap to it. Ruby needs a feedin’.”

The battle was almost too easy. He took a final snapshot and smiled. “I’ll go wash up. Try some of that wine.”

He headed for the bathroom as I located the uncorked bottle atop his cabinet. His wines were all obscure and eccentric – I never saw any of them in the stores, and in New York that’s saying something. The same quality applied to his curios, books and glassware – all of them looking much more indigenous than anything you would find in an import shop. The wine was an Argentinean Shiraz that fired my tastebuds in a pleasing fashion.

Of course, Scootie was rather exotic and inexplicable himself. I was so pleased with the way that our puzzle pieces fit together (and the way his eternal creativity extended to the bedroom) that I didn’t want to spoil it by probing the vagaries. After a year, we still met only once or twice a week, and had never discussed the exact nature of our relationship. He had also talked me into some adventurous moves regarding my career, and I was feeling a little hung out to dry.

The image of him returning from the bathroom, newly domesticated, slipping into a leather jacket, dashed all of this aside like so many violet tennis balls, and soon we were strolling through chilly twilight to a Malaysian restaurant on Broadway. I dipped my hand over the collar of his jacket to grab a hank of his thick, still-damp hair.

“Yes. The Malaysian iced coffee, some roti canai and the mango chicken. Thanks.”

The waiter walked away, and Scootie scoped me with those ebony searchlights, the same way he looked at his paintings. Did I, too, contain a moment of release?

“So what’s the matter?” he said.

I rolled my fingers on the table, four beats, pinkie to index.

“Auditions. Mother fucking auditions.”

“Oedipus Rex?”

“Hilarious! No – Sweet Charity. A revival with Molly Ringwald. Big-time stuff.”

“Good.”

“But I didn’t even feel like I existed. That brutally cordial ‘Thank you’ from some guy you can’t see. Imagine someone slapping duct tape all over your person, and then ripping it off, all at once. God, Scootie! What is it about me that doesn’t fit? Am I completely delusional? I mean, I’m good, right?”

“Are you nuts?” he said. “You’re fucking incredible.”

“Not just saying that? Not just the penis talking?”

“No way. Not when it’s art.”

“So when it’s not art, you might lie to me.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I would lie to you.”

He was being all cute and funny again, but I was determined to plow on.

“I’m not putting this on you, Scootie…”

“Put it on me if you like. I was only telling you what you really wanted for yourself.”

“I know. Now shut up a second, wouldja?”

“Yes ma’am.” I enjoyed this about Scootie. I could be a little rough with him, and he with me. It wasn’t personal.

“Okay. So I’m just looking at what I had before at Greenstreet, and I know it was big fish, small pond, but the pond was in Manhattan. Am I overplaying my hand? Am I screwing myself?”

Our waiter returned with the roti. Scootie tore off a piece, dipped it in peanut sauce and aimed it at me like an instructional pointer.

“Let’s get back to the basic question. Where’s the heat? What do you really want?”

I sighed. “To sing and dance in a musical. Broadway or something close.”

“And at Greenstreet?”

“Edgy, fringe-theater drama. No singing, no dancing. Ironically, a gay director named Giuseppe Verdi hates musicals.”

“Any realistic career footbridge from one to the other?”

“Not… really.”

He took a bite out of his pointer. “So the auditions are bad, and you’re suffering. But you’re suffering in the right direction. You’re suffering for the right reasons.”

I tore off a piece and chewed like a recalcitrant cow. “God. You make it sound like childbirth.”

“It is.”

He didn’t give me much choice. Scootie was one big raging package of artistic integrity. He had taken this wacky idiosyncratic work of his and broken into an art world more full of shit than the stables at Churchhill Downs. And once he landed on the other side, the collectors loved him for his personality, his willingness to actually say something on the canvas. And his fearless sense of humor. Still, it wasn’t easy. I could hear the hiss of my deflating ego, the leak that got louder with each anonymous Thank you.

When we got back, I couldn’t help myself. I took off my clothes, set them at a safe distance, then moussed a tennis ball with kelly green and gave it a toss. It smacked the canvas with a gooey Medusa’s head and came back fast, crawling up my arms and leaving a green circle on my abdomen. I caught a grip and fired it back.

Never one to be surprised, Scootie returned from the kitchen, saw what I was doing and immediately stripped off. Then he unrolled a large canvas, squished out a manicolored delta of acrylics and invited me to lie down.

Just before entry, I told him, “If this sells, I expect forty percent.”



Next: Skiing with Kai


Image by MJV

Purchase the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Outro-Michael-J-Vaughn/dp/1440111405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231020486&sr=8-1