TBD on Ning
Parts
This thread is for those parts of tales we’ve written – inspired beginnings (or middles and endings) and flashes of brilliance that came out of nowhere – only to mysteriously disappear as quickly as they came- leaving us stranded at our keyboards.
Good writing, but orphaned without a “rest of the story”.
Check your files…show off some of that stuff. Who knows? Maybe now is the right time to complete it.
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Permalink Reply by Westerly_2 on
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Trout should have known better than to shoot pool at Al’s with Cookie. First off, he started with tonic and lime. That was his goal – stay sober. Old friends walked up. Cookie was slapping him on the back, and before he realized it the tonic had gin in it, compliments of Cookie.
Then Cookie started arguing with someone at the next pool table. It was about a stack of missing quarters. It was warming up to be a knuckles-out brawl. Trout knew the look of it – hunched shoulders and hate stares. Cookie was claiming victimhood. For a short guy Cookie sure had a big mouth.
“Hey, Fatboy! Yeah, you and your pony tailed friend. Fuck you didn’t grab my cash, punk,” he said.
Trout couldn’t afford a brush with law enforcement just before his court date, and he ducked out the door with Cookie’s cell phone, as he had lost his own yet again. The street of shuttered shops and two-story houses was quiet, except for their piece of it – the pulsing neon, the roaring laughter spilling everywhere, the throb of music pounding down.
He stepped on his foot before steadying himself and punched up Bindy’s number from memory. He hoped she hadn’t changed it to spite him. The ringer thrummed and he wondered how she looked. It was late. How late? Was she in her sleeping clothes – the tank she wore with big cotton pants, and her pale hair loose and spilling over her shoulders?
She sounded cranky. “It’s nearly one a.m. and you’re where? Don’t even think about coming here. It’s not going to happen.”
“I’m staying somewhere else. Relax.”
“Where are you? I hear bar noises, Trout Man – music and swearing. You’re at a bar? Think!”
Jeeze! Such a judgemental person. You shouldn’t wonder they couldn’t get along. Couldn’t a guy play a game of pool? “I don’t want to lose you,” he said.
“You’re drunk, Trout Man. Leave me alone and don’t call me at one o’clock in the freaking morning.” She shut him off before he could even defend himself.
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He hasn’t learned a thing, Bindy thought, sighing noisily, and he probably won’t. He made it hard for both of them. He had put himself in his hole. Deal with it. She had a full schedule, babysitting all weekend and work on Monday – teacher’s aide in the lower grades, so you can imagine it was a workout. She needed her sleep, not some loopy argument at this hour. She hoped he hadn’t managed to lose his job at the warehouse along with everything else. She was done dealing with the fool.
Trout looked into the bar window and saw major animation. Cookie was throwing his head around with his thumbs hooked into his bright suspenders and the other guy – the one he had called Fatboy – poking his finger into Cookie’s chest. Time to hit the road. It was only a few blocks walk. This was not his fight.
He awoke next morning on the lumpy couch with a puddle of drool on his sleeve and a musty aftertaste in his mouth. Cookie’s little dog was prancing around like a rooster announcing the break of day, and eager to get what was coming to her. He checked the kitchen clock: 10:25. When did Cookie roll in, anyway? He checked: no Cookie! Where did he end up? He hoped not in jail or lying in the alley in back of Al’s.
It was then he noticed his clean white court shirt from the thrift store spilled out of its bag and lying crumpled on the floor. It should have been safe on the coffee table where he put it. He picked it up to shake out the wrinkles and saw that the buttons were missing or half-chewed. He glared at the dog and she bared her sharp ivory teeth at him in answer. Shit! His court shirt!
The dog kept baring those mean teeth again and again throughout the morning, especially in the kitchen where she sat staring at the refrigerator. Trout opened the cupboards and searched for dog food. None. So he opened a can of corned beef hash and spooned it into the Chihuahua’s oversized steel dish. She sniffed at it and stalked away like a restaurant critic at a no-star diner.
“Too off-brand for your liking? Or did the button appetizer fill you up?” he asked the dog as she averted her head from his gaze –too outraged to acknowledge his existence.
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heh, heh.How is Fatboy's alternate universe going on? Gotta watch.
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Permalink Reply by Bmichael on
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So far you've got the makings of a fine country-western song going on here - still need a horse, a gun, and a mom... ;-)
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When he had not showed up by 2 p.m. Trout started attacking Cookie’s vodka supply. Cheap stuff he had – harsh, but so versatile. You could mix it with anything at hand – tomato juice, flat soda, Tang, whatever – even that evil pineapple-tasting stuff Cookie had in the fridge. The day rolled on as a droopy-headed day munching salted peanuts in front of the tube, and Trout was ready to crash early when Cookie waltzed in glowing like a bride.
“I’m in love,” he said. “She’s so fine.”
“Where were you all night? I was ready to drag the river.” But Trout was so leveled out now the river drag had long fled his mind.
“At my sweetheart’s. He’s got third shift – her old man. Usually, I’d leave in the morning, but he drew another half shift from a guy in the ER and we got a second wind.”
“Her old man? That doesn’t sound very promising, my friend. There’s no future in that. Somebody else’ somebody.” Cookie kept the cock-eyed grin on his face. This is just another one of your bad choices because she has no kind of loyalty. You can see that. You want a whore that rolled over for you so easy?”
Cookie shrugged his lack of concern. “She’s leaving him.” He turned his back on Trout.
“Yeah, right. And this is a relationship of how many days?”
Cookie held up eight fingers, then ten, around the corner between the living room and the kitchen.
“But she’s still living with him.”
“Yeah, well, she has some debts.”
“You’re a mark, my friend”. He couldn’t help shaking his fists in the air. “She’s having her fun and you’re gonna get your ass kicked.”
“Leave me alone, man. Go back to Miss Starchy Pants, if that’s your speed. “
Trout just shook his head. There was no arguing with the man. He let it rest a beat. The next beat, and the beat after that turned into a cloudy, hung-over morning.
“This is Friday, right?” he asked Cookie, who was rattling around the kitchen with the dog.
“Yeah. What’s this canned stuff in Canoodle’s dish?”
“Something we’ll never get a crack at, now that it’s spoiled. Why didn’t you wake me up for court, man? I was supposed to be there at eight.”
“This was the day? No shit?”
Trout moaned and cradled his head in his hands. “Oh, no. They’re going to be out looking for me.”
“Call and get a continuance, s’what I’d do. Tell ‘em you’re sick, which you are.
“And by the way, she don’t eat no canned stuff. She just eats fresh deli slices.”
“And buttons.”
“Yeah, well, that’s another one of her bad habits.”
“Cooks, they don’t just grant you a continuance over the phone.”
Cookie shrugged. “As long as you’re going to be AWOL, we might as well party on. I’m having some people over tonight.”
And among the guests, as long as her “old man” was working the nightshift at St. Francis ER, was that married honey of Cookie’s. This gave Trout the chance to scope her out in her bulging jeans with her pudgy hand wrapped around a 24-ounce can of malt liquor, grinning her big-toothed smile. She was by no means the great beauty Cookie had claimed, and furthermore, she had the most irritating laugh Trout had ever heard – what an ooga horn would sound like if the horn inhaled with a snorting stop. Yes, he had to save his friend.
He grabbed Cookie by a green and white suspender and led him into the hallway for counseling. He tried diplomacy.
“That ugly ‘ho is bad news, man.”
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Permalink Reply by Carol T on
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This is not so much parts now -- it's turning into Frankenstein's monster (a good thing).
It's alive!
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I forgot to mention Fatboy was also at the party.
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Cookie glared at him, clenching his fists.
Trout couldn’t stop now: “No class, bad past, no future.”
“You’re talking about my lady asshole.”
“You’re looking at the sorry bitch through the bottom of a glass, my friend.”
And who would have thought the little man – not over 5 feet and a half – would have so much strength in him? He swung on Trout’s head with a full vodka bottle like a slugger at bat. It didn’t break; it glanced off his ducking head with a sloshing thwack. If his head had been a baseball it would be sailing over deep center field by now.
Cookie ducked into his room and Trout followed him foolishly, stating his case. Perhaps he could try some more diplomacy. But no, Cookie was hoisting the straight-backed chair from beside his bed.
“Get out my house and don’t come back, asshole. You’re no longer welcome here. Like I need this – know-it-all smutting up my life with your foul judgery. We want you to go.”
And by “we” Trout guessed he was referring to his crazy dog who was growling a deep warning with her jaws full of the cuff of his jeans.
“I’ve been tossed out of classier loon bins than this one is – you and your loser friends….” He yanked his leg away from the dog and heard a ripping sound about the same time he felt chair legs slam across his retreating back.
“I can’t wipe the dirt off this bad news dump off my shoes fast enough,” he muttered mostly to himself, as he was leading Cookie by a widening margin through the throng of clueless revelers. One of them was Fatboy, who had a bottle clenched in his teeth – no hands – tipped up.
“Go back to your skinny blonde mama and her rule book, punk,” the little guy hurled at him, like a last stone, as Trout slammed open the screen door to the back alley.
He ran on instinct the way you do when you pray your legs will know the way. Like a lost dog he reeled unevenly over hills and hollows, getting whipped across the face by the brush which had overgrown the path. When he found it he stopped and rolled in and lay there, drenched and gasping for breath.
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When the sun played on Trout’s jumpy eyelids, he could see he landed on the rear seat of Bindy’s brother’s van. That would put him right in the man’s back yard. It hurt to pull himself up. His back was sore. His calves were tight and knotted. The spot over his left eye throbbed, and twinges of pain stung his face. He propped his chin over the back of the seat and observed the damages in the driver’s mirror. With matted hair, puffy bloodshot eyes and a face full of scratches, he looked like he’d been battling wildcats. He was in no shape to do much but stumble to the door and throw himself on the mercy of Butchie and the missus. The inside door was open and they didn’t act too surprised to see him. He figured the dog had alerted to the van and they had been out there looking down at his crumbled body and bitching about it. Butchie was wearing a layer of weekend stubble and chewing on toast and Rowena was pouring coffee in a fluffy pink robe.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said, and there passed between them a “Here we go again” look he was all too familiar with.
He passed on the offer of breakfast, as his stomach was quivering with waves of nausea, but he accepted the use of the shower. While the warm water soothed his bumps and bruises, they were discussing him out there, he was sure of it. Surely they’d mention his lapse to Bindy with their own take on it. He had to get to her first. He scooped Butchie’s phone off the counter and used the bathroom for privacy. She was skeptical.
Bindy was sitting sideways in the Chevy Nova with her bare legs sticking out of the open door. It was an oven in there, and the laundry baskets were loaded in back, ready to go. As Trout made his case for need and want and change, she twisted a strand of her hair around her finger. When he paused, she wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“So all I have is your word here, Lester Trout?”
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