Short Story / Dinner in the District
Dinner in the District
My house stood nestled there among the other row houses, like dominoes stacked too tight to fall. The neighborhood of Brookland, bounded by Rhode Island and South Dakota Avenues to the south and east, the evening sun to the west, is what the real estate agent phrased a burgeoning development. My bedroom window overlooks Freedom Spirits; its Syrian proprietor had just installed new titanium fittings to the window. Jake occasionally pays rent.
The utility bills jumped after he took the second bedroom. He has a propensity to leave a trail of empty illuminated rooms, a swath of dripping faucets in his wake. Quarter loads of laundry, hot, extended spin. But the arrangement was working out for two highly visceral reasons. He can cook. He wields that chef’s knife over the seasoned cutting board like it’s a baton in front of the philharmonic, rendering passion and movement from the listless mise en place. His étouffée (last week’s included FedEx-ed alligator sausage) and yellowtail ceviche (he called it Triton’s Manna) assuaged any ill feelings lingering beneath the palate. The second reason to put up with all the co-habitational transgressions: His sister is forget-the-cable-bill gorgeous.
The first things you can’t help but notice are those questioning gingersnap eyes. Next, the most strategically placed mole. An ethno-ambiguous Mediterranean finish to a complexion that leaves the passerby questioning whether it be Arab, Egyptian, or Grecian genetics responsible for that olive pout. Lips like they were stained in Shiraz. The smallest speck of a diamond stud in her stage-right nostril left you imagining, hoping, betting on, piercings hidden elsewhere.
Jake asked me to run out and pick up some basil. Mint if they didn’t have any. The neighbors were on their porch, a handful of them. They didn’t know my name either. “Yo Big Guy,” they called. I threw up my arm as I walked to the car. I recognized some of them from the basketball court. They crack up, for some reason, that a white guy from the county runs a little pickup.
The mission was a success. Jake had his garnish, and I picked up some fruit for the week. Walking to my car a bearded transient locked eyes with me. He had a hitch in his stride, or it might have been some sort of nervous tick, I don’t know. I had one dollar in my wallet, I had had to pay for the herbs with my debit card. My hand was at my billfold before the bum was in hailing distance. “Operation Panhandle Freedom,” it thought.
“My name is Marvin,” he said. Jesus Christ, did this guy study rhetoric? Ethos first. Humanize the speaker. Pointless really, he was getting a dollar either way. “I’m hungry, can you help a friend.” Broach the subject.
I handed him the bill as he sized me up.
Okay, so Brookland is not the nicest of neighborhoods. You can call a cab to get out of the neighborhood, but if want to return at three in the morning, you need to tip heavy and in advance. On occasion, certified pre-owned needles, condoms, and fast food containers line the sidewalks. But you are just as likely to walk across hopscotch crosses and double-dutch ropes. Around my house, people live. I have neighbors, even if I don’t know their names. They have kids, rose bushes that they raise. You can’t drive more than 5 M.P.H. through the alley, for all the Tonka traffic. I get home from work, and they’re guys drinking from paper bags on the next-door stoop. They were getting out of work too, relaxing after a hard day. Living in a place, you get blinded by your own optimism that it’s a good place.
Let’s pretend for a minute that Marvin wasn’t about to buy a bottle of hooch. Let’s pretend he was actually hungry, that his only means for sustenance was to subject himself to the humiliation of begging for cash. I’ll give him that much. He had a gaunt look, even underneath that growth on his chin. It could have gone either way.
I fanned out the creases of my wallet, showing him he now had at least one more dollar than I did. What? Did he expect my MasterCard? “That’s all I have on me…”
“What? That’s it?”
He officially lost his audience. I went to walk past him but he stood in my path. He loomed much larger than I expected. We almost saw eye to eye. I could have faked one way and gone the other, but I think Marvin would have seen it coming.
“Listen, if everyone you saw gave you a dollar, you’d be eating better than me tonight.” Introduce a common enemy. I could play too.
“But everyone isn’t giving me a dollar. You’re not everyone. I haven’t eaten yet today.”
I looked in my grocery bag even as I kept walking. I pulled out an apple.
“What am I supposed to fucking do with this?” he asked I was already with my keys at the door to my car. I couldn’t find the open button, I hit the panic alarm by accident. Then I was in the car and the air-conditioner was blowing hot with the windows up. I was boxed in between two SUV’s, had to reverse parallel park. Marvin watched the whole time. He just kept staring at me. His eyes rolled off to the side before each spasm. I may have nudged the bumper of the rear Explorer before I came free of the parking space. As I pulled away, I opened the windows and saw Marvin sniff at the apple before taking a bite and moving on to the next victim.
I walked in through the patio door to Jake was toiling away, as he did, in the kitchen. “Hey, can you grab the door,” he said, zesting blood oranges with his favorite microplane.
“Okay,” I said as I made my way to the entranceway, “but you didn’t hear the end yet.”
“You made it back with the basil. That’s the only end I need.”
Crowding the frame stood Dan “Meat” Melbourne, the college rugby player turned Mortgage Fraud Investigator. His nickname survived the transition from muddied kit to pleated khaki.
“For the chef, for the host, for the dog,” he said, handing me a brown grocery bag replete with imported aged balsamic, a bottle of ’94 Chateau Malescot, and a nearly empty jar of peanut butter. When he would tell the story of that dinner party, the Chateau would be the keystone, the saving grace. At least in Meat’s variant. “If you get that wine breathing now, it’ll be perfect with the lamb.”
With my marching orders, I motioned for him to set on the couch, threw the dog the peanut butter, and poured two glasses of a Chilean Carmenere. I offered one to Jake, but he had his hands gloved in cornmeal and buttermilk, breading the calamari nee fish bait. Wilde bounced around the house, fully occupied, with her Skippy muzzle.
In the living room, Meat was working the iPod wheel with those salami fingers of his. He liked to brag that nearly every knuckle on his right hand had been broken at one time or another during his playing days, and the only match he ever missed – begrudgingly, mind you – was for his grandmother’s funeral. We volleyed for a while with small talk but the smell of papaya and caramelized ginger distracted me from the National’s bullpen.
“So, will Tiz be joining us this evening?” Meat said, glancing from the door to the clock on the wall.
“Okay, buddy, you’re going to sit there with that Brüt lathering and pretend you don’t know she’s already on her way.” His mouth curved into that impish Caliban grin.
“She said she’s bringing a friend,” Jake threw in from the kitchen.
With this, smiles abounded, we topped our wine, and toasted the Skins’ rookie quarterback. Meat went out to the back patio to set the table and chew on one of his cigars. I rolled up my sleeves and entered the war zone. No sooner had I rinsed out the food processor than Jake had it loaded and churning again.
“What are you planning for the antipasto?” I asked.
“Olives and roasted red peppers in the fridge,” he said, replacing the sweat on his brow with flour and crumbs. “Throw on some of that portabella hummus from last night, the proscuttio is in the plastic bag at the bottom there. It was amazing how Jake could use the stuff from last night’s meal – items I’d feed to Wilde or the garbage disposal –and use it to glaze, garnish, or upgrade future dishes. Whatever survived late night picking fingers, anyways.
Jake grabbed the tea-towel I had draped over my shoulder and used it to pull the dutch oven from the broiler. He tested the lamb with his thumb before placing it back into the heat. “I’m about ready for a drink. Meet me out back with a glass while I make nice with the grizzly bear.”
“Hey wait, who is Tiz bringing? Not that vegetarian I hope.” It was impossible to avoid global warming and electoral colleges when she was at the table. “I don’t care what she says. I won’t install water-free toilets.”
“Your safe, Deco. Tiz is watching her goddaughter tonight.”
Jake disappeared through the sliding glass doors and began nestling vegetable-oiled balls of newspaper beneath the coals of his Weber Grill. Meat pointed at something in the distance with the business end of his stogy. The hickory smoke came through the open window and mingled with the aromatics. The flames from the grill distorted the view of the Basilica Shrine; the church disappeared into some soap opera dream sequence. I held the two glasses of wine palm up in my right hand, answered the second knock of the evening with my left.
“Greetings Declan. Meet Annabelle.”
Tiz spun me around as she uncoiled a black scarf contraption from around her neck. She would have been offended if I didn’t watch. The scarf had been hiding a palm-sized octopus pendant, the placement of which I envied greatly. She helped herself to her brother’s glass of wine, still in my hand. I helped myself to the view.
Trailing behind, the unexpected Annabelle. All night, she was playing at one of her loose teeth, like her tongue was staging a prison break, and she didn’t disappoint at the opening. This is the only stage, in all the periods of human development, that missing teeth are aesthetically pleasing. I had wondered why there was a bottle of sparkling pomegranate chilling in the fridge. I thought maybe Jake was going soft.
I shook hands with Annabelle and asked her if she’d like a drink. She followed me to the kitchen and I poured her a flute of the sparkling. I tried to pass it to her, but her hands were busy at the scruff of Jake’s husky.
“Don’t give her too much attention or she won’t leave you alone all night,” I told Annabelle.
Meat and Jake walked in, and in turn, were granted pecks and hugs. I thought Meat lingered in the embrace a bit long.
“And who is this pretty lady?” Meat said, picking Annabelle up in the crook of his elbow.
“Don’t give her too much attention, she won’t leave you alone all night,” Tiz said. Annabelle stuck her tongue out as Meat put her down. She stationed herself at the desk where Tiz had set up magic markers and construction paper. Jake asked her if she thought Declan was a funny name.
“It’s a bit early to start trading shots, Jake. Drink your wine,” I nodded to where I had put down my own glass. He swooped it up as he went into the kitchen, did a little pirouette around the end table. I put the bubbling fruit juice next to Annabelle and Jake told us dinner would be ready in ten minutes.
Meat told a story where he was both hero and clown. I heard it before, had to restrain myself from correcting the embellishments. I countered with my only card trick and promised to show Annabelle how to do it later, but not in front of the adults. She tricked us, did Tiz. With all our jostling, Meat and I became the babysitters. She was free to polish off the Carmenere and start on the Sauvignon Blanc (save some for the scallop pairing, Jake told her in the kitchen).
A short time passed, seats were assigned, placecards on top of napkins, and we sat down to the beginning of the meal. Served on the back porch with torches providing the light and the waxy aroma. The porch dipped two steps down to a rectangle of grass that functioned as the yard. A wooden fence closed us in, higher than my head, with a gate dead center. My roommate walked out with a covered platter – we were already Pavlov salivating – and Jake “Can You Post Date This Check” diRaphael transformed into master artisan, displaying his craft.
“To start, something I like to call a Calamari Kiss. A lightly battered selection of the choicest squid, on top of which, a mild poblano pico de gallo.” He unveiled the amuse bouche, and with a quick glance at the working cauldrons through the kitchen window, dictated the rest of the fare.
Spring Greens with Papaya and Ginger.
Blood Orange Marinated, Peppercorn-Crusted Scallops with a Cumin Risotto. (he would grill the scallops as we dipped our warm marble rye in the olive oil and capers
Braised Lamb Shanks with a Rosemary Pesto Glaze, over Butternut Squash Mashed Potatoes.
To finish, Mascarpone Espresso Milkshakes.
Annabelle looked at the tentacles (my favorite part) in disgust. I sensed a citizen rebellion. Jake retreated, and returned with gusto, “And for the guest of honor, if the squid doesn’t tickle your fancy. Pretzel-Crusted Chicken Fingers with Sweet Potato Curly Fries. It would be nice if you tasted the calamari though, I think you’ll like it.”
Jake did not sit down until he served the lamb. Meat was sucking the marrow out of the lamb bone before the dish hit the tablecloth. Annabelle had long since made a best friend in Wilde, what, with the cooperative plate cleaning effort.
“Hey Jake,” Tiz said, picking up on the conversation of college glory days, “tell them about your side gig junior year.”
When Meat stood up his knees knocked against the table. The wine glasses wobbled like grazed ten-pins. “Like I need another one of Jake’s stories. I’m gonna stretch my legs.” The dog, long ago tired of the now dozing Annabelle, acted agitated when she saw the behemoth rise. On his return from the bathroom, Wilde nuzzled at his hams. Meat carried four virgin wine glasses in one mitt, the bottle of Chateau Malescot in the other. “Start pouring these round. Me and Wilde are going for an evening constitutional.”
“Her leash is inside, where you dropped your keys,” I told him, “Don’t let her shit in the neighbors’ yard.”
Jake started the story. I was a minor character, and Tiz had heard it, in one variation or another, at least a dozen times. He went on, anyway. That’s how it goes with friends and wine. People get tired of hearing about how the day went, or if Tiz was finished with her new mosaic (she went to art school in New York, but studied for a year in France. When she got to drinking, you could still hear the Brooklyn and Bordeaux in her Maryland draw). The good stories, the tested ones, we repeat them. The details get jumbled, segues refashioned, but the tone keeps its note. Like leftovers supplementing the bouillabaisse.
We set to that expensive red. Tiz filled the glasses. Jake relaxed, for the first time, with the cold dessert settling in the fridge. He broke into a sommelier-worthy tirade about how anyone who praised a wine by saying it had “legs” was pretentious and not worthy to sniff his cork. Legs, he told us, only indicated the wine’s alcohol content—more alcohol means more viscosity, hence the wine’s propensity to hang to the side of the glass. A 20% Port would have more legs than a 14% Chablis, but this reveals nothing of either wine’s quality. We digested this new bit of Jeopardy trivia. Tiz took a sip from her glass. My eyes, entirely on their own, settled again on that bastard of an octopus. His name, I decided, was Inkblot. She caught me, in my harmless naming, and smiled a smile beyond this mortal’s interpretation. I must have flushed a shade closer to the wine. Annabelle stirred. She shuffled over to rest her head next to Inkblot. “You tired, honey.” Tiz asked, brushing the bangs out of the child’s face. Annabelle held a drowsiness in her eyes as she played at the softness of the table cloth’s velvety edge. I wondered if Tiz was planning on driving home.
The latch clicked behind me. I wouldn’t have paid it any mind had I not been looking in Annabelle’s general direction. She stopped fidgeting. Her eyes woke from their daze. I turned to look. It should have been Meat. It wasn’t.
“Give me your money,” our guest said to me, but he had the gun pointed at the child. The gun seemed an extension of his arm. Same effect Jake had holding a spatula. It was the color of charcoal and took a clip from the bottom.
We all stood up. Tiz held Annabelle’s hand. Meat. Where was Meat? At first, I was angry. No way would this guy mess with us if he saw that galoot, straining the legs of the plastic chair even as he sat. Then I grew worried. Worried, when Tiz asked the intruder to point the gun at her instead of the girl. He did, right at the octopus. I thought of all those westerns, where the bullet hits a metal lighter, a pocketed deck of cards, the hero is reborn. I quickly shook that thought. No Inkblot ex machina, not today. Then, I thought Meat might walk through the back gate with the dog. Would this spook the gunman into accidental discharge? Or would Meat tackle him into the table, saving the day, another dime novel account of Rugby Man About Town, Savior and Confidant… I doubted it.
“Empty your wallets.”
I heard myself say we didn’t have any money on us, although I can’t be sure, it might have been Jake. What time was it? How long was Meat gone? Would this black guy from the District God Forgot, believe that these people, these white people, these white people drinking red wine, didn’t have their money with them? A dragonfly met his inquisitive demise in the bug lamp. The sound danced around the backyard and sounded like a crumbling Chinese cookie. Where was Meat? Please God, don’t do anything heroic when you come through the back gate.
I measured the distances between Virgil (the gunman, a pseudonym, it makes it easier having something to call him), Annabelle, and Tiz. The gun seemed to be heavy, drooping down towards Tiz’s abdomen. His eyes were jaundiced. I remember that. Darting yellow pinpricks, where white should have been. He might have been on drugs. Are jaundiced eyes a side effect of meth, cocaine? Bloodshot eyes, dilated pupils, sure—but yellow? This was a bit too much for one day. Where were these people coming from?
“Don’t move. Slowly now, turn out your pockets.”
What could be done? I stared at Virgil, got a good look at the man attached to the weapon. He seemed to be about my age. Maybe a bit older, with more wear around the eyes. The hood itself was only slightly conspicuous, the evening had chilled the air just enough for that. His shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the sweatshirt, the pistol, took a toll on his body at large. The bottle on the table could easily become a club. If there had a knife in his right hand there may have been options. Not a gun. It could have been an icebeam he was holding, how it froze me in my place.
“Look, we don’t have anything on us,” Tiz again, hostage negotiating. How could she be so calm? Annabelle bit at her lower lip but otherwise remained stalwartly patient. My bladder, on the other hand, had shrunk to half capacity. Virgil looked again at Annabelle, the gun hovered between the women. “Did you know there’d be a little girl here?” she said.
I thought this would pull the gun back to that magnetic pendant, somewhere, a foot and half below that mole, center mass, fixated. I was wrong. Virgil seemed to pause. Like he didn’t understand the question. No, like the question mattered. He lowered the gun to his side, still gripping it tightly. His fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and just then he looked at down at them and I could tell he was dying for a bite. Except his pinky finger, that nail was long and purpose serving.
The gun rose again, slightly. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular at the moment. Jake stepped in. I was surprised he had it in him. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it.
“Hey, would you like a glass of wine? We have an extra one poured,” Jake asked. Two, maybe three, of Virgil’s possible responses came to mind. Each punctuated with a loud bang and distant ambulance sirens. Again, I was mistaken.
“Can I?” Virgil said, taking the glass from Meat’s vacated spot. He seemed to devolve into a fourteen-year-old. A fourteen-year-old being offered alcohol at a cousin’s wedding. A fourteen-year-old still holding a gun. And then, our guest – now taking a small and considered sip of the wine, now lifting his shirt to expose a slight paunch, laying the gun to rest in his beltline – made a most surprising statement.
“This is really good wine,” he told us.
Looking back, I should have smiled. Amber-eyed Virgil, intent on robbery, murder if it came to it, and he knew his stuff. He wasn’t on any drugs. I must have misjudged the length of that pinky nail.
“Take the bottle, it’s yours,” I said, my only confirmed contribution to the ordeal. As if it was mine to give.
“Our friend, he’s out walking the dog. He should be back any second. I don’t want you to get startled if he walks in,” Jake said.
Forward thinking, Jake was. On another less calamitous occasion, we had a double date. My dollar, his swordfish steaks. We were inside that night, there were Christmas lights up; it must have been early January. Caitlyn, my girlfriend du jour, leaned over the table to offer her friend the plate of finger food that was making the rounds. Avocado quesadillas, I think it was. Just before the plate touched down, she, my date, lost her equilibrium. The china tilted and the mango salsa slipped from the edge. The universe paused. The night all but destroyed for the embarrassed stains on the white blouse, the tan sarong. But there was Jake’s hand, stretched out into the most magnificent basket catch. Crisis averted. I told him later, that it was a game-saving reaction. He said it had nothing to do with reflexes. He just figured, while observing the situation, there was a good possibility the salsa would end up in her lap.
“I think I’m at the wrong house…” Virgil said, his voice inflected just a bit at the end.
A half-minute pause. I could tell you dogs barked down the back alley, that Annabelle said her first memorable words of the evening, that Tiz and Jake exchanged a knowing glance, that I coughed or Virgil shifted his weight. But that would be a lie. In those thirty seconds, we were in purgatory. Sunburned mariners, praying for wind at the equator. To say the wrong thing… And who really knows what could be said? “I agree. You should try the Smiths two doors down.” Or maybe, “no, stay, we haven’t served dessert yet.” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t breathe. I tried to stare at something other than those honey-glazed eyes. Virgil was in check, considering a queen sacrifice.
“I’m at the wrong house,” he said, this time with definitiveness. “I’m going to leave now.”
And with that, he walked out of the gate, taking the glass of wine with him. Tiz deflated into my arms. She had seemed so stoic before, but like a lot of Tiz, it was for appearances sake. Jake closed and latched the back gate before walking Annabelle into the house. Tiz and I, still conjoined, followed. We locked the front door and the sliding glass. We checked that the windows were secure. Meat knocked on the front door, thinking we locked him out as a joke.
“Why are you inside? It’s gorgeous out there. Have you seen the moon?” he said.
The rest you know from the police report. We called 911. They came, searched the area, found the wine glass in an alley not too far away. It was empty and unbroken. They said we’d get it back after they dusted it for fingerprints.
There was something about that look as he tasted the wine. Listen. That was a sixty-dollar bottle. Or at least that’s what Meat quotes it at. Virgil, he knew it was good. How the hell would he have known such a thing? It’s not like he was born with that gun, those eyes, wearing that menacing drape of a hood. Virgil had tasted wine like that before, or maybe tasted wine in a similar situation, with good friends and happy children and that opiate nothingness that washes over you after you’ve eaten too much, had too much to drink. You don’t get that feeling from holding people at gunpoint. Here he was, a cliff diver, troubled by his own wake in the lagoon. Virgil saw that he had destroyed that blissful nothingness that had permeated the backyard. In that pause, just before he left, he was only thinking about how to back out quietly. He didn’t want to leave his imprint on the evening. I think it hurt him, to see the fear in Tiz’s eyes, to see an eight-year-old down the barrel of a gun.
But they found the glass, not the gun.
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This story is wrought with delicious description and an abundance of substance. Each line of cooking is like a short class on french cuisine. Extremely well done. It has two items which help to push stories along; teaching and an attachment to each of the character’s personalities.
Description of setting and the goal of each character are thoughtfully plotted out. I would say this is what the tv show “Friends” should have been. This is much closer to “Coupling” on BBC, and much better.
Meat, Tiz, Annabelle and Marvin are each person’s whom I’ve encountered in my own travelings and are relatable. Gladly relatable.
I’m giving this story a 10 on merit and for not having any grammatical errors. The attempted robbery in Act III was quite believable and kept me wanting more.
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Like the dominos stacked too close to topple analogy
The near spill crisis seems a bit overplayed unless meant to be comical, which it seems is what you’re going for
Transfer from beauty queen to errand seems too abrupt- add a line about paradise fading back to reality or something
Describe beggar more-homeless and dirty or lazy and shiftless? And how pray tell, you know his name-I see you discuss him a bit later-do like the anxious escape-I would have had him toss the apple after one bite-a distinguishing connoisseur
Patio door to see/find Jake toiling away
I would have to add some sort of meat-head comment
Water-free toilets-yikes!
Scarf-contraption a new fashion setter-hope not
More physical descriptions of your characters would help me keep track of who’s who-when they gather I get a bit lost
Such an elaborate menu makes it seem as if this is targeted for a fine dining magazine
Big galoot-or not
Didn’t expect gunplay in the middle of a rather high-brow comedy-kudos
I don’t know if victims, other than cops, can past the gun long enough to recall such vivid detail of assailant’s face-fear tends to make one avoid eye-contact
No watches-jewelry-what about prominent octopus pendant?
Bit fingernails nice touch
Seems to me Annabelle is of an age where she would have reacted by crying or screaming bang-bang cowboy or something
I feel as if there was a lesson to be learned, but can’t figure out exactly what it is-other than installing a peep-hole and keeping your doors locked
You are a good story-teller. Interesting word choice and images. You have a nice balance in your sentence structure, also, which makes your story enjoyable to read. I like your subtle humor- your observations about “inkblot” the calamari. Cute! Your writing, by itself, is very good.
Your verb tense at the beginning is a little awkward- moving back and forth between past and present. Same with all the details at the beginning- Jake’s sister, etc. As a reader, I was wondering where it was going. Same with the encouter with the homeless man, although as I got to the end, I could see why you included him.
I liked the tension when “Virgil” shows up. Once again, as a reader, I am seeing the action through the narrator who has a rather interesting way of analyzing the crisis, although because of this analysis, I don’t know if I felt the surprise and fear that I should have felt, along with the characters. I also had to suspend belief that Virgil would just “walk away” and that he DID have knowledge of good wine. Maybe. But is seemed fantastic that the narrator would have believed that he did. And if he did, then how does that translate to the other homeless man? I wasn’t connecting A with B. I did like the line about “dessert had not been served.” It adds to the situation that they find themselves in.
Overall, the story works. However, i think it could be tightened up some.
I didn’t really get a feel for the “main” character. Who actually was the main person? What was the story about, the people/characters, the dinner itself? I got some idea of the neighborhood. The main character was a little confusing, we didn’t really get a feel for him. It was like I missed the first chapters telling me who this person telling the story was. I got confused in the second paragraph, was this a previous dinner party or was it happening at the time of the story telling. Eventually I figure it out, but until then it was confusing and I lost interest.
Although I still felt like I was missing out on something. It felt like a story one of your friends told you about something that happen to one of their friends and left out some of the details of the story. I think if I could have made a connection at the beginning with the main character I would have been pulled into the story instead of feeling like an outsider listening in.
To start off, the most intriguing and consistent part of the story (to me) was the knowledge of food sprinkled through out. I really enjoy that when I’m reading: reading the words of someone who really knows about a certain topic. It makes their fictional world more credible.
I enjoyed the addition of a girl to whom the narrator is attracted. Your description of her was lovely. The description “forget the cable bill gorgeous” made me chuckle. It would be nice to see the narrator want to be more protective of her during the robbery. On page 14, though, I was confused about who posed the question, “Did you know there’d be a little girl here?” It makes sense that it would be Tiz but at first I wondered if the little girl would be brave enough to say that.
I don’t think Caitlin was mentioned again after she was introduced in the story. That isn’t a problem for me at all but I’ve read that in the short story its best to keep characters to a minimum unless they are necessary to move the story along.
There were a couple of sentences that I noticed need question marks:
“You tired, honey.” Tiz asked, brushing the bangs out of the child’s face
“Have any of you been driving up the beltway and seen the all the turkey buzzards circling overhead.
“Hey, can you grab the door,” he said, zesting blood
If the homeless man and/ or the buzzards are supposed to be parallels to Virgil, maybe the conversation about either of them could be elaborated on. That is just an idea to throw out there. Hope some of this is helpful. Enjoyed reading your story.
Hello,
This is an intelligent and witty story. I love the whole don’t judge a book by its cover. Everyone has a story to tell and you do it beautifully.
Thanks for sharing. I feel hungry now.
Writing in first person works really well for the genre.
I don’t have any alternate suggestions as I love what you have done already.
A few word choices:
I had to pay for the food with
I walked in through the patio door to see Jake toiling away
part in the food chain
Meat stood up, his knees knocked
I’ll point out the little things and then sum up.
You have mixed up your tense in the opening sentence. Keeping it all present sounds best to my ear.
“The first things you can’t help but notice ………….. piercings hidden elsewhere.” Exquisite, original description.
“Tiz practically spun me around ……. I helped myself to the view.” This passage negates all the points the narrator has made on the subject of women. Turns him into just another guy, no matter how clever the prose. Rework.
“Meat stood up[;] his knees knocked against the table…”
“Tiz deflated into my arms. ….. it was for appearances sake.” Another fine bit of description.
I would not try to get too far into Virgil’s mind in this last paragraph. The entire piece is about being in the moment. Trying to guess Virgil’s history or motives is almost pedestrian. It would maintain the elegance of the piece if you Strunk those lines.
Extremely ambitious: almost cinematic/theatrical dialogue without the music and backdrop. I think the backdrop needs attention. All of this is very fine but almost too fine, at times a bit heady. I need to be careful because I spent a good ten years in Manhattan with just enough money to get sick and tired of people who spent their lives wondering about food and wine and who they would fuck that night. I’ve also been on the wrong side of a gun. Very well portrayed.
Overall an excellent job. It feels a bit anemic on setting. Not so much in setting the scene but in grounding the prose. Could be my American ear assigning certain traits to higher levels of diction, and I am a bit torn as to how much the tone and sparse description end up supporting the Virgil scene, that otherworld, outside-the-body rush and survivalist presence anyone feels when a loaded gun is pointed their way (or even in the room, for that matter). Like to see what others say before passing any judgment. Nice job, though, one more draft and it goes into the collection.
This drew me in and wound up kind of disappointing me. I think you have quite a bit of talent and craft, and more than enough potential to write publishable fiction, but this is maybe 70% of the way to publishable.
The beginning of the story is marvelous. I’m totally drawn in by how fabulous his chef roommate makes him and so forth. The episode with the panhandler is a little too long but otherwise nicely unsettling.
It gets sloppier as it goes on. Once they go outside to eat, there are numerous very awkward bits of prose. It stumbles.
Then we get to Repo Men: if you’re going to mention them, Meat has to reference the film of the same name, which you really must see, if you haven’t. Make the line after Tiz surrounds the words with finger quotes: Meat shrugged. “Well, the life of a repo man is always intense.” Because of course Meat has seen the film, while high, a dozen times. Anyone who has seen the film, and we’re legion, will like your story all the more.
Okay, then somebody shows up and holds them at gunpoint. Had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that. The kind of neighborhood that had kids out in Tonka cars during the day would be very unlikely to have this sort of really blatant street crime. If guys are out drinking on stoops, they’re going to keep an eye out on the yuppie foodies and their little girl, because those yuppies are the only ones in the neighborhood the police are going to give a crap about.
Okay, so he’s a rank amateur, is why. Um… I just can’t stretch my willing suspension of disbelief to cover a rank amateur street hood who knows good wine. You’re going to have to do a really good job of convincing me, and you haven’t. You break a fundamental rule and tell rather than show me his motivation in the last paragraph, when if you write the scene with the wineglass well enough, I can draw the conclusion that it was a desire not to put a wake in the lagoon that caused him to leave. SHOW me the lagoon. There is no lagoon in the story until we get there, unless you count all the seafood they’re eating.
Which is why this is a good first serious try at a publishable short story but in no way publishable. It lacks imagistic coherence. You have a number of linked images of sea creatures: the octopus on Tiz’s throat, the calamari, scallops, etc. But the other meaningful scenes in the story don’t link to those images. The panhandler doesn’t have any link to that set of images. Think of the number of different ways you could link him to the sea creatures and begin to lay out your vision of a lagoon. Something as subtle as having Marvin wearing a torn, filthy Miami Dolphins T-shirt, for example. Now he’s linked. But then you’ve got roadkill and buzzards, and they don’t go along.
Nor does the Repo Man. Ask yourself: what does he bring to the story to justify taking up 5% of the text? The gunman is in no way a repo man, so you’ve got to link him by means of image or structure to repo men if you want to leave the repo man in the text. And they both need to be more closely linked to aquatic imagery.
That’s the kind of thing you need to do to write plausibly publishable short fiction. You’ve got a good grip on structuring a narrative and creating characters that I can remember (except the narrator, but that’s often a feature, not a bug, of this type of story), but a publishable story is a tone poem as well. Pat yourself on the back: this is much, much better than the most of the awful crap that’s on this site. It’s just… inchoate, is maybe the right word. It would be complicated but not especially difficult to transform this into a publishable story.
“bounded” is awkward – perhaps “bordered”, or “banded?”
“Overlooks” --> Overlooked, “Jake has” --> Jake had; Watch tense through the whole piece, be sure it stays in the past.
“We’d” also a bit awkward—> We would, we could
“Embarassed”—> Embarassing
Description of Jake’s sister seems irrelevant placed here – place elsewhere? Also, “pout” does not refer to hue, but rather a placement of the lips.
“Operation Panhandle Freedom”—> What does this mean? Is the main character thinking it to himself? Do you mean “Panhandler Freedom,” IE Financial freedom for panhandlers?
Chip and Dip catching incident is a flashback? Clarify this.
“Have kids and…”—> “Raise kids and rose bushes” I like this sentance.
Your dialoge is really good, natural. A bit more explanation of the characters, maybe introduce your narrator’s name a bit earlier.
Look back over, especially reading aloud. If you (or someone else you know) has to stop and re-read a few times, the sentance is probably a bit awkward and needs to be re-worked.
You use a LOT of sentance fragments – this is difficult for the reader to follow and makes for a jerky experience. Save them for moments of extreme drama or emphasis.
Really excellent ending, some great humour mixed in with moments of true tension. I would definitely re-work the beginning, and perhaps eliminate some unimportant facts, replacing them with more character information.
House stood – window overlooks.
Tense agreement. _ I feel like MS Word and don’t want to focus on this sort of stuff, but it just distracted me right at the start.
Your writing style agrees well with the subject matter, educated and well styled, a little over worked easiness, just like the characters. It fits well.
The scene with Marvin begging the dollar and the apple set up a nice undercurrent of unease in this little suburban ghetto.
I was beginning to think the dinner party description went on too long, but afterwards I understood why you wanted to take time to set the scene. The intruder built nicely on the unease caused by Marvin.
I found the story well written, the ending surprisingly undramatic and in it’s way, all the better for that. A nice story with a very human feel.
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