here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline followed by a new story from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”

“Indiana wants me. Lord, I can’t go back there.”
- R. Dean Taylor
-
9:38 a.m.: Stop at the barbershop to drop off my new CD. “I like the cover art,” Raymond says.
9:39 a.m.: It’s by Biva from Pompano, I tell him. She does lots of sneaker art.
9:40 a.m.: “I can’t even put it on until after 11,” Raymond says. “You know the rule.” It’s the only rule I know and the only one I’m willing to abide by, I say. I just wanted to leave it on my way to work.
9:43 a.m.: “What’s your recipe? I forgot,” Robert says coming out of the back with a coffee pot. I don’t have a recipe and don’t even drink coffee but I love the fact that Robert always asks me that - and in that way - so I make one up.
9:43:28 a.m.: Black, with two parts cream and four parts sugar, I say. And don’t stir it. I like everything to settle on the bottom so I have a big treat waiting for me. You know, like the juicy bottom of an Italian ice. “You a caricature,” Robert says shaking his head.
9:44 a.m.: He always says that to me. I think he means I’m a “character” but I like the idea of being a caricature better – all big ears with a forever forehead and chunky cinder block teeth jumping out of my mouth.
9:46 a.m.: Robert hands me a cup of coffee and I thank him profusely because he is the nicest man in the world. And I’m not just saying that. He has plaques and citations to prove it. In fact, the owner doesn’t’ even let him cut hair here anymore ‘cause he’s too old. They just keep him around because he’s so nice. “Which is no small thing,” Raymond told me one afternoon. “You remember that.”
9:47 a.m.: “You can take it with you. It’s our to-go cup,” Robert nods to me. No it’s not. It’s clunky and ceramic and is covered with a portrait of a bright moon and a raven-haired woman. “Yes, it goes, it comes back. It’s our to-go cup,” he insists. OK, thanks, I say.
10:09 a.m.: On drive to work a voice on the radio is singing, "I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks…And I'd like to check you for ticks." That's so sexy.
10:18 a.m.: At a stoplight a UPS truck pulls up beside me with the driver side wide open. Check out driver’s legs.
10:19 a.m.: Nice calf muscles.
10:20 a.m.: Think about how I always wanted to be a UPS or Fed-Ex guy but never thought I could make the grade. The drivers all seem too energetic, healthy and incapable of getting lost. But now I’m thinking maybe I could be a DHL guy. They seem a little rough around the edges, like maybe they drink orange soda for breakfast, dodge paying child support and are indifferent about whether their girlfriends ever bother taking their tops off during sex. And get lost…a lot.
10:33 a.m.: Red carpet girl is standing outside our building looking at the sun. “Getting some natural color,” she says. “It’s the latest thing but it’s a pain in the ass. You have to be outside.”
10:34 a.m.: How you doing? I ask her. I heard you fainted or something at the Muvico over the weekend. “Yeah, and I get the one uncute paramedic in the universe. Ain’t that the fucking way, baby.”
10:34:14 a.m.: That is so the fucking way, baby.
10:48 a.m.: Tiara confides in me that the boss has destroyed every bit of creativity she ever had. Hey, I say, if creativity were grapes that man would have crushed enough of yours by now to keep a small country in cheap wine until the end of time.
11:12 a.m.: Wonder if Raymond is listening to my CD about now.
12:04 p.m.: Get heartbreaking card in the mail. There is a picture of a bird outside a cage looking in and the words detail how the person was moved by something I did. The sentiment makes me cry a little…for myself.
12:05 p.m.: And you, my love.
12:07 p.m.: “Hey, what’s with the face?” new guy asks. I moved somebody, I say. “Where to?” No, emotionally. I moved somebody. “Give me a break,” he says.
12:19 p.m.: Go to lunch alone.
12:33 p.m.: Eat six grape leaves.
12:41 p.m.: I spot this lady climbing on the playground set and I keep looking for a kid. I figure some toddler must be up in one of the tunnels or something.
12:44 p.m.: There is no kid. She’s on her own. She’s a tiny woman but she’s wearing high heels and it’s a very awkward sight as she tries to cross the drawbridge to the slides on the other side of the castle.
12:48 p.m.: She drops to her knees at one point and then gets a heel stuck between the planks of the bridge. I almost *leap up to help her but then I’m like, help her with what?(italics) What the hell is she doing? She’s not climbing in a fun, goofy way. She’s nimbly creeping along in a very disturbed manner. In this one act she has completely ruined the word “playground” for generations to come. I think that’s enough reason not to help her.
12:50 p.m.: Plus I’ve got slimy grape leave hands.
1:14 p.m.: On way back to office I come across the strangest scene. The area behind our building is filled with over 100 cop cars. The vehicles are all brand new and still have the factory stickers on them. Options include Kevlar trunk packs. This must just be some kind of holding area because the cruisers are branded with all
different cities and counties.
1:17 p.m.: If you’re out late one night you should really stop by and key all the ones from Miramar or Polk County just for fun. Call me and I’ll go with you.
1:18 p.m.: Suddenly get the urge to lie face down in the middle of the parking lot while surrounded by the cop cars. Just for practice.
1:21 p.m.: As I’m heading back into the office HR lady stops me and plucks a piece of gravel off my chin. Thanks, I say. I was just surrounded by cops and they forced me to lay face down in the parking lot with my hands behind my back.
1:39 p.m.: The company is holding an advancement seminar this afternoon and everyone was invited but me so the office is empty.
1:45 p.m.: No use working when no one can see you working so I decide to call it a day.
2:12 p.m.: On the drive I look down at the to-go cup that is still full of morning coffee made by the nicest man in the world. I can’t wait to bring the to-go cup back.
2:13 p.m.: And I can’t wait to get home. My cinder-block teeth are protruding out through a haphazard grin in anticipation. I am getting to the bottom of my life and I’ve got a big treat waiting for me.
2:13:09 p.m.: She’s moving out tonight.

*I have never leaped in my life. I am so full of shit.

COORS LIGHT

Glenn Oldsen stood at the door like he did most summer nights, trying to gaze out into the neighborhood but centering his attention on small rips and tears in the screen, wondering what had come in today that would attack him tonight.
A few weeks ago, his wife had accused him of being a social cripple. “Because of you,” she said, “we have no friends.”
She decided to take a stand when she saw two neighbors across the street playing what she said was horseshoes.
“You go over there,” she demanded, “and talk to them.”
“But what would I say?” he fought. “They’re playing a game. What am I gonna do, ask them the score? I don’t even know if people keep score in horseshoes.”
“Find out,” she howled.
So, to appease her, he got the dog, leashed him up and walked across the street with his back to his own house. Imagine a man being forced to turn his back on his own home, he thought to himself at the time. Despite his resignations, he walked directly up to them not saying a word, put his eyes on the ground, moved his head and hands around vigorously — showing some elaborate body language for the woman he used to love, who was certainly peering at him from the kitchen window — but he didn’t say a word. Even though, for all intents and purposes, it appeared as if he were socializing frantically with his arms flailing about while the dog sniffed the playing field, not a word was uttered.
Finally, when he’d said all he had to say, he raced home.
For the next couple of weeks, he did this every few days or so to keep everyone happy. It seemed to work. He got used to it.
But the dog didn’t.
“How come I can get used to things easier than the dog?” he asked his wife.
“I don’t want to talk about why you get used to things easier than the dog,” she said.
But he did.
And tonight, he decided to come out from behind the screen door. Maybe his wife was right, perhaps he just needed to talk to someone he didn’t have to talk to for a change.
He was in a good mood actually, because, like most people, Glenn works on the reward system. “OK. I make it through another day. I’ll take myself out for a big sloppy pizza, maybe a dollar movie. Is it 5 o’clock yet? Where’s my reward, where’s my reward?”
Well, it was 5:45 and he’d stopped at Blockbuster on the way home and picked up two Christopher Walken movies that had never made it to the theaters as his day’s reward. But there were still more than two hours of summer sun remaining and the verticals in the den let in too much light for his liking, especially for a Christopher Walken film.
So, he started to make his way toward the house across the street. Not the one where they play horseshoes but if you were at his front door staring at the ones playing horseshoes, it would be the house directly to the right. The one where the guy has a big truck in his driveway that says, “EXTERMINATOR” on it. Glenn had often wondered if the driver brought the truck home so he and his wife wouldn’t have two car payments or if the company made him take it home so he’d never forget who he was.
It was a question worth asking, but by the time Glenn got across the street, the neighbor was down on his knees in his driveway messing with the lawnmower, having some kind of problem. Something to do with the goddamned choke, Glenn was sure.
And he was cursing.
Suddenly, Glenn didn’t seem to care about the truck anymore. “Enough!” he said, startling the man. “That’s it! We have to make a pact right now. If either one of us goes down while pushing the mower, if we peek through the fence because we sense a mower has been rumbling in one place too long and we spot a body crumpled beneath the push handles, we’re to let that man be.”
The neighbor stood up slowly and seemed to recognize Glenn. “You mean if we drop of a heart attack or something?” he asked.
“Exactly,” Glenn said. “One of us drops. The other guy sees it. Does nothing. No yelling or screaming. No Joes from down the street taking turns pounding on our chests. No neighborhood revival. None of that. One of us drops. The other sees it. Does nothing.”
“Sounds kind of odd to me.”
“Odd, man, look at us,” Glenn said angrily. “This is it. Look at you down there on your knees. Look at you!”
The neighbor looked at himself and then went to ... “Don’t look at that fucking truck, man!”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk to me like this,” the neighbor said.
“I have to,” Glenn said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I have to talk to you like this.”
Glenn wasn’t sure if his neighbor had found this profound — that Glenn had to talk to him — or if he just wanted to get rid of him or what, but he came right into the fold.
“OK, OK, I’m in, I’m in,” the neighbor said.
“You won’t be sorry. Just think how it will be. The last thing you’ll see is the undercarriage of those mower handles. I don’t know about you, but I want to be lying on my back,” Glenn said as he buckled his knees and laid himself flat out in the man’s driveway. “I want to look straight up at the cable running from the throttle. I want to see the shiny silver chrome glistening in the sun. I want to see the tiny rust spots from those two days I left the Toro out in the rain. I want that to be the last thing I see and then everything go blank — except for that tunnel, of course, and that bright light and Leon Russell poundin’ out some chords and all that stuff.
“Oh, one more thing. And this is the important part,” Glenn added. “You can’t change your mind. Time like that, shit like that going down, a man wants to change his mind. So, just to be sure we don’t ever get the opportunity to change our minds, we’re to never speak again.”
“Never,” the neighbor said.
“Never.”
“Deal,” he grinned, cranking Glenn’s hand and getting into his truck to head up for a 12-pack of Coors Light. He didn’t tell Glenn that, Glenn just knew.
“You finally talk to someone you don’t have to talk to and you make a death pact with him?” his wife asked him as soon as he got home.
“Oh,” Glenn said, closing the blinds, “you make it sound so horrible.”

e-mail me at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com

Posted by T Shine at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

COORS LIGHT

Glenn Oldsen stood at the door like he did most summer nights, trying to gaze out into the neighborhood but centering his attention on small rips and tears in the screen, wondering what had come in today that would attack him tonight.
A few weeks ago, his wife had accused him of being a social cripple. “Because of you,” she said, “we have no friends.”
She decided to take a stand when she saw two neighbors across the street playing what she said was horseshoes.
“You go over there,” she demanded, “and talk to them.”
“But what would I say?” he fought. “They’re playing a game. What am I gonna do, ask them the score? I don’t even know if people keep score in horseshoes.”
“Find out,” she howled.
So, to appease her, he got the dog, leashed him up and walked across the street with his back to his own house. Imagine a man being forced to turn his back on his own home, he thought to himself at the time. Despite his resignations, he walked directly up to them not saying a word, put his eyes on the ground, moved his head and hands around vigorously — showing some elaborate body language for the woman he used to love, who was certainly peering at him from the kitchen window — but he didn’t say a word. Even though, for all intents and purposes, it appeared as if he were socializing frantically with his arms flailing about while the dog sniffed the playing field, not a word was uttered.
Finally, when he’d said all he had to say, he raced home.
For the next couple of weeks, he did this every few days or so to keep everyone happy. It seemed to work. He got used to it.
But the dog didn’t.
“How come I can get used to things easier than the dog?” he asked his wife.
“I don’t want to talk about why you get used to things easier than the dog,” she said.
But he did.
And tonight, he decided to come out from behind the screen door. Maybe his wife was right, perhaps he just needed to talk to someone he didn’t have to talk to for a change.
He was in a good mood actually, because, like most people, Glenn works on the reward system. “OK. I make it through another day. I’ll take myself out for a big sloppy pizza, maybe a dollar movie. Is it 5 o’clock yet? Where’s my reward, where’s my reward?”
Well, it was 5:45 and he’d stopped at Blockbuster on the way home and picked up two Christopher Walken movies that had never made it to the theaters as his day’s reward. But there were still more than two hours of summer sun remaining and the verticals in the den let in too much light for his liking, especially for a Christopher Walken film.
So, he started to make his way toward the house across the street. Not the one where they play horseshoes but if you were at his front door staring at the ones playing horseshoes, it would be the house directly to the right. The one where the guy has a big truck in his driveway that says, “EXTERMINATOR” on it. Glenn had often wondered if the driver brought the truck home so he and his wife wouldn’t have two car payments or if the company made him take it home so he’d never forget who he was.
It was a question worth asking, but by the time Glenn got across the street, the neighbor was down on his knees in his driveway messing with the lawnmower, having some kind of problem. Something to do with the goddamned choke, Glenn was sure.
And he was cursing.
Suddenly, Glenn didn’t seem to care about the truck anymore. “Enough!” he said, startling the man. “That’s it! We have to make a pact right now. If either one of us goes down while pushing the mower, if we peek through the fence because we sense a mower has been rumbling in one place too long and we spot a body crumpled beneath the push handles, we’re to let that man be.”
The neighbor stood up slowly and seemed to recognize Glenn. “You mean if we drop of a heart attack or something?” he asked.
“Exactly,” Glenn said. “One of us drops. The other guy sees it. Does nothing. No yelling or screaming. No Joes from down the street taking turns pounding on our chests. No neighborhood revival. None of that. One of us drops. The other sees it. Does nothing.”
“Sounds kind of odd to me.”
“Odd, man, look at us,” Glenn said angrily. “This is it. Look at you down there on your knees. Look at you!”
The neighbor looked at himself and then went to ... “Don’t look at that fucking truck, man!”
“Hey, hey, don’t talk to me like this,” the neighbor said.
“I have to,” Glenn said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I have to talk to you like this.”
Glenn wasn’t sure if his neighbor had found this profound — that Glenn had to talk to him — or if he just wanted to get rid of him or what, but he came right into the fold.
“OK, OK, I’m in, I’m in,” the neighbor said.
“You won’t be sorry. Just think how it will be. The last thing you’ll see is the undercarriage of those mower handles. I don’t know about you, but I want to be lying on my back,” Glenn said as he buckled his knees and laid himself flat out in the man’s driveway. “I want to look straight up at the cable running from the throttle. I want to see the shiny silver chrome glistening in the sun. I want to see the tiny rust spots from those two days I left the Toro out in the rain. I want that to be the last thing I see and then everything go blank — except for that tunnel, of course, and that bright light and Leon Russell poundin’ out some chords and all that stuff.
“Oh, one more thing. And this is the important part,” Glenn added. “You can’t change your mind. Time like that, shit like that going down, a man wants to change his mind. So, just to be sure we don’t ever get the opportunity to change our minds, we’re to never speak again.”
“Never,” the neighbor said.
“Never.”
“Deal,” he grinned, cranking Glenn’s hand and getting into his truck to head up for a 12-pack of Coors Light. He didn’t tell Glenn that, Glenn just knew.
“You finally talk to someone you don’t have to talk to and you make a death pact with him?” his wife asked him as soon as he got home.
“Oh,” Glenn said, closing the blinds, “you make it sound so horrible.”

Posted by T Shine at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline.
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.” This week’s included breaking and entering. Let me know what you think….

If there’s someone you can live without, then do so.
And if there’s someone you can just shove out, do so.
— Barenaked Ladies

10:10 a.m.: Sales guy, who has been sulking for days, tells me he’s trying to get over some woman. I know the woman he’s talking about, but … Did anything ever even happen between you two? I ask. “No,” he answers.
10:11 a.m.: So what the hell are you getting over?
10:11:28 a.m.: “Oh, what could have been, what should been, what I wanted to happen.”
10:11:34 a.m.: Has anything you wanted to happen in life ever happened?
10:11:44 a.m.: “No.”
10:12 a.m.: I didn’t think so.
10:22 a.m.: Decide to storyboard my whole day like they do for movies. Currently have about 11 scenes drawn. “How do you even know what’s going to happen ahead of time?” new guy asks me. Oh, I’m not as spontaneous as my arrest record would make you think, I say. I’m very calculated. Very scripted.
10:41 a.m.: “What’s that?” new guy asks. Oh, that’s me drinking tuna on the banks of Coconut Creek at 12:17 p.m. while children wade offshore with homemade nets to catch baitfish and old household appliances that have been discarded in the water.
11:02 a.m.: Marti, the new supervisor, is in an argument with the music guy over some assignment. “It’s not my idea,” Marti says. “The boss wants you to do it.”
11:02:10 a.m.: “So that’s how it’s going to be?” music guy snaps.
11:02:22 a.m.: “I serve at the pleasure of the boss,” Marti replies.
11:03 a.m.: On my storyboard, music guy gives her the finger.
11:03:14 a.m.: There it is.
11:18 a.m.: Tiara is distraught about her future and says she has given up all hope. Hope isn’t for people like us anyway, I tell her. Hope is only for finalists, when the odds really get narrowed down to your favor. Like when you make it to the Final Four in the NCAA tournament or say you have a cousin who dies and has left his money to either you or one of your two brothers. Then, at least you have a shot. Otherwise, hope is an illusion.
11:31 a.m.: Sales guy has his arms folded and his head down on his desk like we all did in seventh-period social studies in high school. Hey, do you open your eyes down there? I ask. I used to like to open my eyes and count the hairs on my arms while Mr. Hanley talked about the civil rights movement. “I just called her,” he says, popping up. What’d you say? “I told her that if she’d give it a chance, I’d promise we’d have fun … forever.”
11:32 a.m.: What did she say?
11:32:22 a.m.: “She said, ‘I like fun. I just don’t like you.’ ”
11:33 a.m.: Good line. I like her. I think I’ll storyboard her up, make her all coltish and wily and untouchable.
11:44 a.m.: New guy challenges me to a text-messaging contest. OK, I say, who do we have to get to first? “Art guy,” he says. “Eight words, 25-letter minimum. Go!”
11:44:19 a.m.: Art guy throws his arm up. “It’s Shine,” he yells. “ ‘I serve at … the pleasure of the boss.’ ”
11:45 a.m.: “Double or nothing,” new guy shouts. “To Carrot. Three words, 12-letter minimum. Go!”
11:45:09 a.m.: Carrot stands up at attention, raises one finger and says, “It’s Shine: ‘Fuck you … loser.’ ”
12:11 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat alone.
12:16 p.m.: Someone gave me a pouch of tuna as a gift, but I’m not sure how to eat it.
12:17 p.m.: So I drink it.
12:21 p.m.: Buy a rusted-out blender from a kid named Toby D for $1.25 and sit on the riverbank, picking the muck out of it.
12:32 p.m.: Think I’ll make everybody smoothies this afternoon.
1:01 p.m.: In foyer of office, sales guy is at the bulletin board, plucking the phone numbers off a homemade ad for a 2003 Toyota Corolla someone in the building is selling. I can hear him mumbling, “She loves me; she loves me not.”
1:02 p.m.: This is not healthy, I tell him. You just need to shove her out of your life. Think about all the mean things she has done to you. Think about how she throws French fries at the homeless and calls cripples “losers.” Think about how she’s a loyal Bushie and a Brooks and Dunn fanatic. Think about how she goes to that diner in Dania Beach and meets jai alai players for nameless sex.
1:03 p.m.: “Only two of those are true,” he says. “And it’s not ‘nameless’ sex. She says she just can’t pronounce the names. Anyway, you’re not helping.”
1:04 p.m.: Picture her with a mustache, I say, holding up a storyboard.
1:04:13 p.m.: “That’s a start,” he says, perking up.
1:17 p.m.: Spot tech girl heading out to her new sports car. Hey, give me a ride, I say. “I’m just driving around back to set my digital compass,” she says. “But you can come if you want.”
1:19 p.m.: As she drives around the building, she reaches over to pull out the instructional manual. Oh, I can do that and talk you through it, I offer. “Have you ever successfully helped someone with an instructional manual?” she asks. No, I reply. “I didn’t think so,” she says.
1:20 p.m.: She finds a wide-open area and starts reading from the manual as she one-hands the wheel. “OK, first, I initiate this, and then, I just have to circle until the setting stops flashing and … ”
1:21 p.m.: Excellent, I didn’t expect 360s and doughnuts on my first ride, I say. “This should just take a second,” she explains.
1:23 p.m.: But we’re still whipping in circles, and the settings just keep flashing. At first it’s dizzying, but then, we get into sort of a mixing-bowl rhythm, and I’m glad the digital reading keeps blinking.
1:24 p.m.: “Do you really think hope is an illusion?” tech girl asks. No, but I like to depress people, I say.
1:25 p.m.: “I was going to do this tomorrow, but I saw it on the storyboards,” she says. “Are you still going to make swampy smoothies for everybody this afternoon, too?” Definitely, I say. I like to make people happy.
1:25:14 p.m.: “It’s kind of a shame that even the unpredictable has become so predictable,” she says. Yeah, nothing just happens anymore, I note. That’s kind of sad.
1:26 p.m.: “This dialogue is getting pretty heavy,” she observes, shifting into overdrive. Yeah, but its mixed with action, so it’ll work. Can you go a little faster?
1:27 p.m.: I close my eyes, and the sensation feels like we’re now up on two wheels. North, south, east and west have converged, and if I open my eyes, I’m sure I’ll see nothing but sky.
1:28 p.m.: This is going to take all day, tech girl says. I better drop you off.
1:28:09 p.m.: No, no. Don’t stop, I say. I think this could be fun …
1:28:12 p.m.: Forever.

e-mail me at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com

This Perfect World:

Amy With a Y

The sensation comes and goes. I feel my bare foot on carpeted stairs and everything feels ... not all right ... but better.
It started two weeks ago, when I turned 23. I was sitting in the one-bench park across from my apartment building scribbling in the margins of the newspaper. I was playing with my name like I did in middle school, trying different versions: Amy, Aimie, Aimee. I remember when I thought that could change everything about me.
Anyway, I was looking down at the loopy letters and noticing how I still used open circles to dot the i’s, when I saw the picture of the parents sitting on a frilly canopy bed. The couple was thin and orangey-tan, as if they played tennis every day. But they seemed awkward among the fat and fuzzy bears that sat beside them on the colorful quilt. Hanging from one of the bed’s four posts was a white sweatshirt — a “hoody” — and another post was striped barber-pole style with blue and gold crepe paper.
I read a little. Apparently, blue and gold were their daughter’s school colors and her first name was the same as mine. Amy with a Y. But then I went back to the photo. The vanity set had one of those three-legged, fairy-tale chairs before a large oval mirror; tasseled pillows were everywhere. All the furniture was cream-colored, and atop a wall-length bureau were small trophies with blue metallic plating. I couldn’t tell exactly what they were for. From one angle, the figures on them looked like itty-bitty archers aiming arrows. But when I put my face real close to the paper, they just looked like tiny, gold-dipped girls with their backs arched proudly, swanlike.
The gist of it was that Amy Brennan was gone. She was killed in one of those accidents where the driver was doing 800 mph with 11 kids in a Mazda Protégé or something. Seven of the kids died and the 18-year-old driver got manslaughter for being stupid or whatever, because he wasn’t drunk.
This was the one-year anniversary of the accident so I figured they must have asked all the parents how they were coping and Amy’s parents were the only ones who must have wanted to be in the paper. I wanted to feel sorry for them because they went on about her SAT scores and how she’d already been accepted at some place called Dartmouth and that she never even got the chance to ride the mountain bike they bought for her 17th birthday, but my eyes just kept going back to the room.
It was near the end of the article that they mentioned it was a two-story house, and that’s when I started feeling the carpeted stairs under my feet. Every place I’ve ever lived has been a one-story. The apartment I share now isn’t even an apartment, really. They call it an “extended efficiency” because it has a full-size refrigerator; otherwise it would just be an efficiency. I almost had my own room when my oldest sister moved out to Sacramento. Not to go to college or anything, just to go. “I’m going to take one giant step,” she said. And that’s what she did. From Boynton Beach, Fla., to Sacramento, Calif. One giant step.
I was going to have my own room, but then my parents divorced and I ended up at my aunt’s house, sharing a room with my mom of all people. I quit school and moved out when I was 16 and a half. At first, I thought about going to Sacramento but I hadn’t even heard from my sister since she left. A friend she went to high school with told me she was selling yogurt.
For a while, after I moved out, I lived with a friend’s parents. She had her own room until I got there and then she hated me in two weeks. “I can’t stand it anymore. I keep stepping on you!” she screamed one night. Before I left her house, I would lie on the floor in a sleeping bag dreaming of what my own giant step would be.
But once I left, I seemed to make only little steps that led to nowhere. I met this older guy who I thought was going to take care of me but he got fired from his job for stealing a case of Dustbusters and things were never the same. I did get this neat job taking photos of people getting on the river tour boats. I really didn’t know anything about photography but this lady taught me how you just line up their faces with the life preserver ring and everybody’s happy. She moved to Boston to work in a bridal shop and I took over. Nobody ever complained about my pictures but the people were so ugly and from Ohio that I started to get sick of it pretty quick. Plus, the captain started touching my hair all the time. So, I quit.
For the past three months, I’ve been working for this auto parts place but they’re a bunch of jerks, too, and I was thinking about quitting last night while I was walking past the Brennans’ house. It’s about the fifth time I’ve been by there in the past two weeks. After reading the article again, I thought I knew the area in Delray where they lived, and I was right. It even says “The Brennans” on the mailbox. It’s the only two-story on the block and when I went by in the early evening the first couple of times, the whole upstairs was black. But after 10, the lights go on in one bedroom and I’m sure Amy’s room is the one facing the street, because it’s always dark.
The second time I came, I was going to knock on the door right away, maybe ask directions or something to see what they were like and peek up the stairway. In my head, the steps are maroon, but I’m hoping I’m wrong. I’d prefer beige or another airy color. Anyway, I chickened out and thought it better if I returned on another night and was honest about it. Tell them I saw them in the newspaper and how their daughter’s room was lovely and my name is Amy, too, and those trophies — were they for archery? I couldn’t tell. And I’ve dreamed of having a canopy bed to hang my “hoody” on and being surrounded by fluffiness and an army of fat, loyal bears because then ... I don’t know. I think I would feel safe and ... better — better than I’m feeling right now. If I could just sleep in that bed for one night and you would love me and I would love you back. I could make that promise.
I wanted to say all that but they would probably freak and think I’m weird. And maybe I am. So, I chickened out the next time, too.
But tonight, something is going to happen. It doesn’t even look as if anyone is home and the sensations are coming in a wave now — I feel my fingers on the cherry-wood banister, my face in the pillows, my sanity beneath the quilt. The gravel walkway leading up to the side door is sharp and coarse but I have already taken off my shoes.
The carpeted stairs will be so soft.

Posted by T Shine at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. does your car smell funny and, if so, is it a reflection on you? I think it is. -tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”
This week’s short story is one of my favorites. Let me know what you think…

Tell me I got here at the right time
If I did it’s probably the first time
— Josh Ritter

9:20 a.m.: “You’re a good guy,” my roommate, Katee, says, catching me off-guard.
9:20:14 a.m.: Because I am.
9:20:21 a.m.: And then, I’m not.
9:28 a.m.: Try to decide whether to tuck my shirt in for work or not. It’s been 138 days since I tucked.
9:29 a.m.: 139.
9:34 p.m.: My Prius has body odor. I get in and everything is fine; it smells like babies on a vine. But as soon as I start the engine, a blast of body odor comes rushing out of the air vents. It’s as if someone has put a crusty pair of gym socks on the engine’s manifold.
9:35 a.m.: I’ve tried making sure the A/C is on before I start the car, but the end result is only slightly different: arctic body odor. Polar bear body odor.
9:36 a.m.: There are a lot of great pluses when it comes to these new hybrid automobiles — tax credit, 50 mpg, a commonality with Owen Wilson and Cameron Diaz — but nobody advertises that in month four you will be greeted by a horrendous blast of body odor. I’m talking opening-Dale-Turner’s-locker-a-year-after-he-quit-the-wrestling-team-in-ninth-grade kind of BO. I’m talking the smell of socks, 3-year-old sneakers and the cup Dale even wore at home to mow the lawn in case rocks flew up and nailed him in the crotch.
9:38 a.m.: When I start the day, I don’t smell a beautiful woman or the roasting of fresh breakfast-blend coffee or the burp of someone who just ate a bowl of mandarin orange slices. I smell Dale.
9:43 a.m.: On my way to work, I spot a billboard advertising the best diet ever: “Bacardi and Diet Cola: 0 Carbs. 0 Sugar.”
10:10 a.m.: Several employees at work are comparing hit lists. “I have a separate one for people at work I want to kill, and one for just family. Which one do you want to see?” music guy asks me.
10:11 a.m.: I guess the work one. Am I on it? I ask.
10:12 a.m.: “Of course, but look how far down you are,” he says, handing me his list. “I’d probably get arrested before I got to you. You know, bodies piling up and all.”
10:13 a.m.: “It’s very trendy to do this,” red carpet girl says, highlighting a couple of people on her list in pink. “It started in Vancouver.”
10:14 a.m.: Tiara, who’s always looking to be more productive, has suggested people pool their lists for efficiency. “That way, three people won’t be trying to kill the same co-worker at the same time,” she explains.
10:16 a.m.: As the staff exchanges lists, the marketing guy remarks, “I’ve heard about this. I’ve been to seminars that go on about this ad nauseam, but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it: teamwork!”
11:02 a.m.: Get text message from DJ at a “pure rock” station who is always bugging me about eating lunch alone too much. Message reads: “perusing FARK and came across this headline: ‘u know tht coworker that always eats alone?? You may want to keep an i on him.’ ”
11:03 a.m.: I find the story online, and this headline pops up: “Cannibals Usually Dine Alone.”
11:05 a.m.: The reasoning has to do with the transference of disease, so it kind of makes sense for cannibals to eat solo. Plus, you don’t have to share, and nobody says things like, “Please pass the lower intestines.”
11:06 a.m.: Wouldn’t it be cool if I were a cannibal instead of just a social misfit?
11:48 a.m.: Boss calls me into the office and says Marti, the new supervisor, has a problem with me. I thought she liked me, I say. We were just talking about the ending of Chumscrubbers for 20 minutes the other day. She didn’t say much back, but she listened pretty contently.
11:49 a.m.: “She can’t figure out how to work with you,” boss says. “She asked me if you come with an instruction manual.”
11:50 a.m.: “Well, do you?”
11:53 a.m.: Move boss and Marti up to the top of my hit list.
12:02 p.m.: Get an invitation to Harlem Globetrotters Summer Camp and am definitely considering it. Campbell’s Soup sponsors the camp, and I can envision morning dribble drills, tenting with the wily Jermaine Brown and crunching up Ritz crackers for big heaping bowls of tomato soup whenever I desire.
12:04 p.m.: “I once went to basketball camp, and we all practiced spinning basketballs on our erections,” new guy says.
(please make sure above image is used for illustration/ts)
12:04:13 p.m.: OK, no basketball camp this year.
12:28 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat solo.
12:53 p.m.: Dine on a beautiful woman in a lemon-colored jogging suit. Her name was Kamila, and I’m sure she will be missed. Eventually.
1:41 p.m.: As I’m heading back into the office, a mousy girl smoking a brown cigarette says, “I hear there’s a hit out on you.” Who the hell are you? I demand. “I’m not even here,” she replies.
1:43 p.m.: My computer screen is flashing with a free offer — 10 cases of Mountain Dew if I take four minutes to fill out a survey. Ordinarily, I’d ignore such a ploy, but Katee loves Mountain Dew. It would be fun if 10 cases of Dew showed up at the apartment and Katee invited all her girlfriends over to share in the bounty. And I could sit in my room listening to them talk into the night about overtime at the restaurant, low-grade ecstasy, TV on the Radio and how, one week, they all ended up fucking some guy named Ronkins.
1:45 p.m.: I always enjoy hearing their giddy voices in the near distance, coming through the crack beneath my bedroom door along with the kitchen light. I like hearing my name come up in their conversations when I’m not present, and I love to fall asleep to the sound of their stupid laughter.
1:47 p.m.: Survey isn’t what I expected. It includes questions such as, “Would you be interested in starting a revolution?” and “Have you ever shoplifted Mach3 razor blades?”
1:48 p.m.: Yes and yes.
2:12 p.m.: Red carpet girl comes over to tell me how she used to enjoy drinking a cosmo at lunch. “You know, I was into the whole Sex and the City thing,” she says. “But now that the show is on TBS, no more cosmos for me. Sorry if that sounds pretentious, but that’s just the way I feel.”
2:13 p.m.: You can’t help the way you feel, I agree. “Anyway,” she continues, “You want to go see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie again?”
2:13:09 p.m.: I don’t think so, I say. I’m about to start a revolution.

e-mail me at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com

The Truest Way to Do Things

The spot where I usually stand - and I'm not thrilled about this - but the spot where I usually stand with the pitcher of iced tea is near the restrooms. It's kind of my standing-in-the-wings place between refills. Some of the other workers just go around every eight minutes or so, but I really keep an eye on my area and actually like the word refill, even though I have to say it about 410 times a day. At least that was the count yesterday.
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
"Refill?"
You get the idea. I don't even mind when some people say, "No thanks." This other girl, Staci, tries to start pouring before even asking because she says she has to lighten the pitcher. "It kills my wrist when people keep saying, 'No thanks,' " she says. I tell her it's not about her, but she says everything is about her.
A woman screamed at me one day: "For God's sake, will you please stop asking me if I want a refill? Refill, refill, refill!"
I said, "OK." Because it was, you know . . . Her husband stopped on the way out of the men's room and gave me $5 "for being classy," he said. I took the money, but I don't think it was being classy not to get upset with his wife. I just thought it was OK that she got upset that I kept asking her.
I became the refill girl eight years ago. I know that sounds a little crazy but only if you think about it. I turned 24 last week, which is the age where people start asking, "Don't you want to do something else with your life?" But after a week or so, they don't ask anymore. I never put a heck of a lot of thought into it other than that I started doing this when I was 16, and I haven't stopped.
Sometimes, my co-workers kid me, saying I'm going to be an 80-year-old refill girl. They make this shaky, old-lady voice and ask, "Refill?" After we closed one night, this guy Andy, who's really pretty funny, did this whole bit of me hobbling around and missing people's glasses and falling asleep in midpour and whatnot. But I told everybody that when I am 80 and refilling iced teas, my hand will be steady, there will be no quiver in my voice, and they will all be dead.
I also remind them that Arthur has been busing tables longer than I've been the refill girl. They say, "Yeah, but he's slow."
"But he's fast at busing," I tell them. I know a lot of people who are fast in the head but slow at their jobs, so I don't necessarily buy into all that.
One night, Gwen, the hostess who looks like Katie Holmes, was out sick, so they made me the hostess. I had to wear this slinky dress that made me feel Hawaiian for some reason. It was kind of fun, and two guys asked for my phone number. But I'd never want to do it again. For one, I kept looking back and thinking the people weren't trailing me. I was scared to death I was going to lose somebody. Plus, I don't like feeling Hawaiian.
Oh, before I forget: Chili's is the best. A lot of people lump it in with T.G.I. Friday's, Applebee's and Bennigans even. But Chili's is the best. Trust me on this.
Last week, I was standing by the restrooms, cradling my pitcher, and this guy came by, sort of eyed my station in life and said, "That looks depressing."
"Not depressing," I said. "Just sad."
He was kind of cute, and I thought it was a good comeback, but he just kept walking. I never think of my job as depressing, but to be honest, it does bother me when people I care about think I'm stuck in a depressing job and should be miserable.
My friend Kimmie, who works in marketing and drives around in a car with a giant Red Bull can on the back and made $31,000 last year, tells me I'm in denial. But I have all this stuff outside work that's important to me. I take pride in my job, but it's not where I find my inspiration.
Most of all, I like to write poems about my body and my friends' cars. About how I have these inverted ridges on my knees that look like bottle caps, and how my right arm is completely covered in freckles while the (reverse this) other arm only has one, and how my friend Kevin has put $23,000 into a 1991 Honda Civic and what I most appreciate is how he can make his dashboard lights change from blue to fluorescent green to frosty orange anytime he wants. So, anyway, I write poems titled "Kevin's Dashboard Lights" and stuff like that. Sometimes, I go to this place in Delray where you can read your poems. But it seems like the people who write the poems only like the poems they wrote, and they ask me "why this?" and "why that?" - questions I don't have answers for. 'It's a poem,' I say, but that doesn't seem good-enough for them. That's why now, when I finish a poem, I just put it in a notebook under my bed. It seems the truest way to do things. That way, you don't do it for attention or recognition, and no one ever asks you stupid questions about a poem.
The only poem I ever wrote that kind of went off the track of body parts and hooked-up cars was one I once scribbled in the middle of the night titled, "What If It Really Is All About Staci?" It doesn't fit in with the others, so I keep it under the bed in a separate notebook.
I mostly work nights, and a lot of my co-workers go to the beach. They ask me to go, but I prefer to lie in the shade at parks. I like grass better than sand, and I like to be near swing sets. Sometimes, a kid will stray off a little and step on me on purpose. The moms always yell their names. A lot of times, the kid's name is Justin, so you'll hear, "Justin, you get over here right now. You leave that young lady alone." And then, I'll pop up and say, "Aha! Now, I know your name. It's Justin, isn't it!" And then I tackle him and make him giggle and squirm. That's kind of my m.o. at the park.
I like to think of myself as a playful person. Friends are OK, but I still like to hang out with my mom the most. We get ice cream and go on these nature walks where there are supposed to be, like, 212 species of birds, but we only spot about four. But I appreciate the fact that there's all that different kind of life hidden away there. I don't have to see it.
My dad sometimes bothers me about being the refill girl. I try to annoy him even more by telling him I won't always be the refill girl. I'll be the refill lady - and the refill mom someday, I hope. I don't mind setting my whole course to asking, "Refill?"
I pretty much like people, and it's not that big a deal. And I really do hope that when I'm the 80-year-old refill girl, my voice will be sweet and steady with a touch of character. And people will say, "Jana over there has been here forever.”
I've always wanted to be someplace forever.

Posted by T Shine at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. Let me know what kind of part-time jobs you’re working. -tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”

To pickles and dirty girls and all the extra Teds in this world.
— Tiara

10:30 a.m.: For starters, everybody can go fuck themselves.
(is that ever going to get old? Somebody needs to sit me down and explain to me how that may become tiresome and repetitive ‘cause I just don’t see it happening.)
10:32 a.m.: Marketing guy confesses that every time he sees the new girl in the billing department, he wants to throw her on the floor and ravage her. I like the word ravage, I say. “And some days, I like to picture her completely naked except for, like, one article of clothing,” he says.
10:33 a.m.: What kind of clothing? I ask. “Oh, like a hat or a lobster bib or biker shorts,” he explains. “Yesterday, it was one shoe.” One shoe? I wonder. I’ve heard of people getting turned on by a naked woman in high heels, but one shoe? “I’m totally in love with her,” he says, “but if I told her any of this, she’d probably think I was a pervert, right?”
10:34 a.m.: Probably, I confirm. But she’d be wrong. You really sincerely love her, right? “Yeah, yeah.” Because if you were mentally stripping every woman who walked by or telling all your friends how you’re “gonna hit that” every time a new woman joined the staff, that would be perverted. But if you truly love somebody, all etiquette is out the door. It’s only lust and passion and, you know, perversion in a good way.
10:34:17 a.m.: When it comes to love, everybody’s a pervert.
10:35 a.m.: “So I should tell her?” marketing guy asks. Definitely. “You always make me feel better.” That’s why I’m here.
10:40 a.m.: Sales guy comes in complaining about his part-time night job making sandwiches. “I smell like meat all the time. I can’t stand it anymore.”
10:41 a.m.: I know Tiara makes extra money dressing up as mascots and bunnies and stuff for different promotions, but I thought I was the only other one who also had a part-time job.
10:42 a.m.: “What is it you do again?” sales guy asks. I work at the Marriott in West Palm as a greeter and sign-in guy for seminars, I say. “You’re the person who sits at the table with all the name badges?” That’s me.
10:44 a.m.: New guy says he has been working with his brother-in-law at odd jobs, and tech girl decorates cakes at Publix three nights a week. Surprisingly, the music guy has been working as a nail tech for six months. “It runs in the family,” he says.
10:45 a.m.: And the normally prudish Carrot reveals she has been doing sales at a custom motorcycle shop. “Chiminey’s Cyclerama,” she says. “I know the name sounds goofy, but Chiminey’s a cool guy. I dated him for a while; that’s how I got the job. Now, I just work there to be near him.”
10:46 a.m.: “I have to wear this stupid checkered smock at my job,” sales guy complains.
10:46:10 a.m.: “I have to wear black leather chaps,” Carrot retorts.
10:46:13 a.m.: “OK, you win,” sales guy concedes.
11:12 a.m.: Former art guy calls to tell me that at his new job, a couple of the women had asked co-workers if he was gay. So are you? I ask. “No,” he snaps. “But it’s not about that. They said the reason they asked was because they found me ‘soft’ and ‘nonaggressive.’ I don’t mind being thought of as gay, but I can’t have my employees thinking I’m soft. I’d rather be known as a hard-assed gay.” Of course you would, I say sympathetically.
11:14 a.m.: It’s like in that mob movie when the guy asks, “Is it better to be loved or feared?” I say. Is it better to be gay or soft?
11:14:20 a.m.: “I really don’t want to be either one,” he starts to say, “I … ” You obviously don’t have a choice, I interrupt. “But I’m … ” Quiet, I’m thinking: To be gay or soft … soft or …
11:14:41 a.m.: “You never make me feel better,” he growls. That’s why I’m here, I say.
11:18 a.m.: She says she doesn’t love me and never will. Shit!
12:02 p.m.: New guy comes over to my desk to suggest we all get together tonight around midnight after our second jobs. “You know, meet outside a 7-Eleven like construction workers do and stand around drinking 40-ouncers.” Sounds good, I say. Text me the details.
12:34 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat alone.
1:33 p.m.: When I get back to work, I read a story on the five warning signs of burnout at the workplace. No. 1: You come in late and want to leave early.
2:20 p.m.: Came in late, so I want to leave early.
7:04 p.m.: Take another shower because I like to be superfresh for my second job.
8:17 p.m.: Lots of Ted name badges tonight. Guy in a blue suit comes up and asks me if the seminar deals with personal investments or just group investments. How the fuck do I know? I ask. Is your name Ted? “No.” Well, it is tonight, I say, shoving a name badge in his hand.
10:51 p.m.: Steal a rum and Coke from banquet room and head out for 7-Eleven in Oakland Park.
11:48 p.m.: Tiara is already out front, wearing green tights with the head of a pickle sitting on the hood of her car and the music guy diligently working on her cuticles. “Deli grand opening,” she reports. “They’re always the worst — especially for pickles.”
11:49 p.m.: I can’t take my eyes off the pickle’s forehead.
11:51 p.m.: Carrot walks by, heading straight for the store. “Anybody want a Bartles and Jaymes?” she asks.
11:51:02 p.m.: “Definitely,” Tiara calls.
11:58:32 p.m.: Sales guy won’t get out of his car. “I smell like meat,” he yells. “You don’t want me too close.”
12:08 a.m.: New guy shows up completely covered in muck. “Fucking spackling,” he says.
12:11 a.m.: Carrot passes around wine coolers and immediately starts complaining about her night. “This gang called the Dream Catchers came in again. What a sissy name for a gang, right? Anyway, all they do is pester me: ‘Come on, you coming out with us tonight, Dirty Girl?’ ”
12:12 a.m.: “Dirty Girl?” new guy asks.
12:12:10 a.m.: “That’s my nickname around the shop,” Carrot says matter-of-factly.
12:13 a.m.: “Oh, and Chiminey’s wife came in,” Carrot continues. “Y’all can guess how that went. Haggard bitch.”
12:14 a.m.: “Who’s next?” music guy asks.
12:15 a.m.: “How was your job?” Tiara asks me. Too many Teds, I say. You know, I like this. It’s nice to have a second job to complain about. Sometimes one just isn’t enough.
12:16 a.m.: “Cheers,” new guy says, raising his bottle of Apple Passion.
12:16:02 a.m.: “Cheers,” we all repeat.
12:16:10 a.m.: “To pickles and dirty girls and all the extra Teds in this world,” Tiara adds.
12:16:32 a.m.: “And meat in your pores!” sales guy yells from his car.
12:17 a.m.: “Oh, next week, I’ve got a job building a tree house,” new guy says.
12:17:10 a.m.: “That sounds like fun. Can I get in on that?” Carrot asks.
12:17:32 a.m.: “Sure, if you wear those chaps.”
12:21 a.m.: Tech girl comes barreling up and starts complaining about a customer who had ordered a NASCAR cake. “I made this beautiful blue car, and he’s whining that there’s not enough sponsors on the hood. He wants me to squeeze in Pennzoil or some shit. I swear, I think I’d rather be a stripper who just has to jump out of cakes.”
12:22 a.m.: Immediately envision tech girl jumping out of a cake wearing nothing but a lobster bib.
12:22:04 a.m.: And suddenly, nothing else matters.

e-mail me at tmshine@msn.com

bonus –

The Sign of the Cross
“It’s right between the two exits,” he could still hear his wife telling him as he slowed on the interstate. “Look for a burned patch of grass and a flock of seagulls etched into the sound-barrier wall. Right beneath the third gull going south would be good. Perfect.”
A perfect place to die, Raymond mumbled to himself as he pulled onto the shoulder. From the start, he hadn’t understood why his wife wanted to place a cross at the spot on I-95 where her brother died in a car crash 11 days earlier.
They’d seen the flimsy roadside memorials — simple white crosses draped with small flowery wreaths — on occasion, but had never paid them much mind until Greg was killed. And then, they seemed to be everywhere.
“It’s almost like it’s a fad,” he’d said to his wife, trying to deter her.
There was one along a lonely stretch of U.S. 27 that just said “Moose,” and so many others whose names were indistinguishable at 60 mph. Once, he had even approached one when he’d gotten a flat out on 441. It was set back a ways and he went over and read the name aloud: Katlyn Maurich.
He paused for a second to try to picture what she must have been like. He immediately thought of her as young; not that young, but young enough that if she had met him, she would have thought he was old.
But he hadn’t given the subject much more thought until his wife wanted to put a cross up for Greg. He didn’t want to demean her intentions and, besides, he liked the idea of being the crossmaker. Generally, Greg had been a pain in the ass, but a couple of times, when Greg had been drinking and his defenses were down, Greg had embraced him and thanked him profusely for some small favor: “Remember that ride you gave me that night nobody else would? Thanks, man.”
So, he had gathered up some fresh scraps of wood, bought a pint of eggshell-white paint and gone about the task with the same meticulous enthusiasm he had had with his son’s last science project.
Gregory Doyle McGrath in black block letters was the first thing he saw when he opened his trunk to take out the cross. He was certain that the accident (which he’d been called to that night to empty the car out before the tow truck took it away) was about 50 yards farther up the road. But if his wife wanted birds, birds it would be.
What if all deaths were marked like this? He wondered. He recalled how his Aunt Dorothy had tripped and stroked out while reaching for a jar of mustard in an A&P in Rochester, N.Y., when he was a child. What if Uncle Drew had shown up at the market and tried to hammer a cross into the shelving just left of the hot sauces and ketchup?
So, yeah, marking the spot of tragedy didn’t make such sense, but plenty of things he did to help people these days didn’t really add up: helping someone pick up a leather couch from Rooms to Go that was going to put them miserably into debt despite no payments until 2002; building an addition to a neighborhood couple’s house, only to watch them divorce a month after its completion. Besides, the game was at 1 p.m. and he was looking forward to that. So, he’d do this and then he’d have that.
With a rubber mallet, he whopped at the cross’s peak, but the cross just kept sinking until it looked like a totem pole for a tribe of ants. So, he pulled it back up and moved it a little farther south.
The flock of birds would be flying away from Greg, more than over him, but it would have to do. And the paramedics had said they’d actually lost him on the way to the hospital. For all anybody knew, his soul took flight as the ambulance screamed past the Miami Subs on Federal.
“Here goes,” he said as he gave it another try. This time, the cross went in firmly. He walked back to the car and got the goodies his wife had sent with him: Greg’s key chain bottle opener with the words “Ron Jon Surf Shop” on it, the CD case to Van Halen’s 1984 (his favorite), a Piper High graduation tassel, a small wreath and some fancy tangerine stationery.
He put the possessions around the base of the cross, flung the wreath over the top, and then read the long letter his wife had written, before folding and weighing it down with the key chain.
There also was one sheet of blank paper. “In case you want to say something,” his wife had said.
But what? He thought. Better just a heartfelt letter from a sister who truly loved him than a note from someone who only tolerated the guy’s existence because he had occasionally thanked him for small gestures when he was drunk.
Instead, he got back in the car. But as he tried to build speed along the shoulder to join the traffic, he could hear his wife’s nagging voice rustling in his ear: “Why didn’t you leave a note? Why couldn’t you just take a minute? Is that too much to ask? There must be something you wanted to say to him while he was alive but never got the chance to.”
He stomped the brakes and reached for the tangerine slice of stationery that had slid down on the floorboards. His hand was trembling as he scribbled the note, trotted back to the cross and left the words lying there like his own epitaph.
“You’re welcome.”

ok, here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. i highlighted the edited parts for everybody this time out but next week you’re on your own. - tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”

Posted by T Shine at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)