Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
In the Elevator with Albert Einstein
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
I shouldn’t have been up on that roof in the first place, but I kept thinking I could save a lot of money if I fixed it myself. Then I tripped over my own hammer.
The roof tumbled by in a blur as I tried like hell to separate my up from my down. My cheek scraped against the eaves, I went into freefall, and …crack: skull meets driveway. My eight-year-old, Jenna, was playing in the front yard and saw the whole thing. She was probably traumatized for life. Jesus.
And then I was in an elevator with some guy. A familiar-looking guy. “Are you … Albert Einstein?” I said.
“No, no,” he said. There was a silence while he studied the elevator buttons, dozens of them, in an intricate layout. “I used to be,” he said conversationally, “but you see, I died. Where does this elevator go?”
“I don’t know. Up?”
“Up,” he said, springing up and down on the floor a little. “It seems possible. Are you dead?”
“I think so,” I said. I thought of that last, flickering moment of seeing bits of bloody brain splattered across my driveway. “I hope so.”
The elevator pinged, and Einstein’s attention leapt to the door. It opened on a … I wasn’t sure. There were tables, with people sitting at them and talking animatedly … cups of coffee … something that might have been macaroons …
“It’s a café,” said Einstein. “Very encouraging: I’ll get off here. And you?”
I didn’t know. Einstein stepped out, waving for me to follow.
It was much larger than it had looked. There were no walls, just wooden floors stretching into the distance, and far off, a night sky blazing with stars. From many tables away an old woman was running toward me, an old woman who looked like Jenna, and it seemed to me that everyone might arrive at the café at about the same time.
Before she reached me, there was a collective “Aaah!” and everyone looked up. I looked for Einstein, but he had moved away. Jenna took my hand just as the stars began to fall, streaking through the sky with all the inappropriate iridescence of gasoline in a mud puddle.
“You really freaked me out that day you died,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Then we watched the sky fall for a while.
Hollywood Goddess
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
When she told him it was a long-term commitment, he assumed it was like any relationship, a simple “I love you” once a day, flowers on important occasions, spooning in the afterglow of sex. He didn’t like to be tied down, had many lovers, many flings, always something on the side, often on the side of that. Man about town, frequenting the brothels and the nightclubs of Hollywood. But when your lover is immortal, she doesn’t play by the same rules. A wannabe starlet off the bus from Grand Rapids she was not.
He said yes because he liked a challenge. She was a fucking goddess.
The sex was awesome, but the relationship made him needy. He didn’t expect to be jealous, didn’t expect to pine when she didn’t answer her cell.
“I want to hang out,” Aphrodite said, a noisy party in the background. “I’m just busy.”
“You said that last week,” he said.
“Sorry, sweetie. Gotta mingle and schmooze. Call ya. Kiss.”
She hung up and he pulled to the side of the road. He pounded the steering wheel. He hadn’t counted on the role reversal, being one of many lovers, being cast aside. He drove to his favorite bar and tried to pick up chicks, but his heart wasn’t in it.
When she blew him off at a Bel-Air party the next week like he was some regular schmuck, he lost it. He interviewed a dozen hitmen before deciding to off her himself.
He wound up Laurel Canyon and parked his Bentley outside her Mt. Olympus split level.
In her bedroom, amid moans and giggles, he wasn’t surprised to see her naked, cestus on the floor, body entangled with two well-endowed men who modeled for romance novel covers. Only Aphrodite noticed him walk in.
“Hey sweetie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I think I should ask you the same.”
“I think it’s obvious. You could join us.”
“I don’t think so. Not my scene.”
“Careful,” Fabio 1 said. “She’ll cut your pecker off.”
“Oh hush,” said Fabio 2. “That was someone else in her family, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t seem scared when he slid the submachine gun from his jacket and leveled it at her, just a flash of anger and a moment of realization. He held the trigger until the mag was empty.
This immortal, just like the men in her bed, was not immune to gunfire. He knew she would return, in another form, at another time, and it would happen all over again. Right now, the feeling of taking her out in a spray of bullets and blood was spectacular. He felt free.
He left the house, set on hitting up all the spots on Sunset and fucking every girl he could find.
Ares, the god of war, didn’t like to be tied down.