Short Story / In my country we have problem, and that problem is the Jew.
She was an undercover non-practicing fashionista. A retail slave that kept selling cotton in the belief that if she had Sunday brunch every week for the rest of her life, then she would be content. Saucy, witty, fine taste in literature and eager for new music; sometimes this was a bit unsettling, but some people are happy with just the right amount of drama in their lives. She held wine tasting parties once or twice a month, where each guest was to bring a brown paper bagged bottle of wine retailed at under ten dollars to the party. As each guest entered, she numbered their bottle and asked the them to secretly write down the vineyard and year in her guestbook that she had managed to procure from the 99cent store. And after enough tasting had been done and the unveiling of her carefully prepared arrangement of cheeses and crackers, everyone would announce their favorite wines and their identities and introducers would be revealed. Everyone who was invited always had an amazing time. So San Franciscan, and everyone walked or biked home blasted, and there was always at least one person thinking of her on their walk to the Muni stop.
On her days off work, if it wasn’t a laundry day, she’d patrol through the used book store as if she was genetically designed to walk a certain route through her favorite authors, which of course write witty heart warming novels or excrutiatingly humorous novellas. If she wasn’t careful she’d get lost for hours sitting on the one-foot high black plastic stool in a corner, because just like the casinos in Vegas, the bookstore owners install the brightest halogen lights and purposely do not put up clocks to make you lose track of time. And if her headphones plugged her ears to add to her preoccupations, she’d be there until closing, missing out on dinner dates with her friends, because her cell phone service is so horrible that she has no reception deep inside the store. Halogen, by the way, is any group of five chemically related nonmetallic elements including fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. And even after all that, you couldn’t help but still admire her.
Meandering isn’t uncommon in one of the flattest districts of the city. In an hour, you could eat melty watermelon gelato in a warm waffle cone, buy a six dollar bottle of premium soju, skim through the latest Hong Kong cinema converted to vcd, watch jolly women dancing an Irish jig to a Fukienese girl playing a violin, taste the newest honeydew flavored Yan-yan, and toast shots of Jameson while someone is on stage singing a Cantonese version of “I Can’t Go For That”. Too compact with too much to do maybe, but if you walked at the right speed you could learn to really enjoy yourself.
That afternoon I walked 0.25 miles an hour. There she was. The little French girl. She’d barely enough breath for a cigarette. I inhaled deeply and smelled the cherry blossoms desperately trying to prematurely break out of their buds, and this complimented her cheeky expression as she waited for me to catch up. “You’re too slow,” she pouted.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been watching reruns of ‘Life Goes On’.”
“What’s that?”
“Nevermind,” I said. I was almost relieved she didn’t know what that show was. We were on our way to buy tickets for the opening show of the Korean film festival at the Presidio Theater, but she wanted to stop for a late dinner at Firefly on 24th St. “I don’t think we’re going to make it. I’ll just get the tickets tomorrow,” I tried to convince her.
She giggled, “You just ate too much!”
“Me!? You finished my food!”
She only laughed more. “Let’s go to the bakery near my house,” she said.
“You’re still hungry!? How do you fit all that in your tiny stomach?”
“Stop it!” she couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t even think it was funny anymore, but once you get a giggler started it’s hard to stop. After she gained her composure she suggested, “Let’s get a coffee then. You can read your book and I can write. No more Chuck Norris either!”
“Okay but I can’t promise anything.”
We arrived at the corner of Fulton and Divisidero and it’s fairly empty in the cafe. A cafe au lait and a chai in “for here” pints for only five bucks. I recognized one of the workers as the one that gives too much head when pouring a Guiness (not in the way you think I’m thinking)and the other as the one that remembers my four shots of espresso. The one of the two barristas that remembered me gave me an acknowledgement nod but I always found it weird to give that nod to girls so I just said “hey” and threw up a sideways peace sign instead. ”Let’s sit outside, it’s still nice,” she said and I just followed.
I gulped, it burned, and I lit up. She tapped her pen on the metal table, and was lost in gaze that suggested that she was daydreaming. Occassionally I’d catch her eyes as I exhaled periwinkle plumes of smoke and I’d turn to the next page. I couldn’t see what she was writing and I never asked. When I saw the cover of her notebook I thought of cowbell for some reason, I don’t know why. I watched her for a few minutes while she wrote undisturbed by drunks across the street or the homeless woman asking for change for a cup of coffee. Half-way through my glass I said, “I think I know what song is in your head right now.”
She looked up and smiled, “Oh really? Okay let’s see.”
“But first you have to tell me what you’re writing.”
“Noooo. That’ll be too easy then.”
“Noooo. Okay fine. You look like you’re ready to be turned out by the next lesbian to hit on you. A little confused. Maybe not confused, just curious. You keep pausing after not even finishing a sentence and you look up, like you’re accessing some thesaurus in your head. And I notice when you get the exact word you want because you hold your pen up and jiggle it just slightly, like you’re hitting the smallest cymbal in the world. But there’s a rhythm to it like you’re listening to a song on repeat.”
“Okay what song then?”
“Feist, One Evening.”
She laughed, “You’re so stupid! That’s what we were listening to in the car.”
“Am I right?”
She smiled again, “Maaaaybe.”
“I don’t know if can even do that anymore.”
“What?”
“Write in a notebook. I’m too used to typing everything.”
“I don’t know. I like it. It’s theraputic.”
“But I was right wasn’t I?”
“If I say yes will you let me continue?”
“Sure.”
“Then yes.”
“See!”
She just shook her head with a faint grin, and I read and breathed in the pleasant air knowing the coming days would be warmer. I love this city, I don’t want cancer.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
i really liked the story even though i did not think that it was finished properly. i think that there needs to be more to the ending, espicall;y since the line
‘i don’t want cancer’
does not appear to make sence nor have any revelance what so ever to the rest of the story. the end of the story is what the reader is left with, so it should have some revelence to teh rest of the story, unless you are intending to have a sequal. i do not get what the title has to do with the story either. it got my attention as my first thought when i read the title was ‘you racist pig’ but the title did not seem to have any revelance to the story. but all in all i liked the story, but the ending is a bit weak
- add/view comments (0)
August 30, 2006
Deleted User
Title….story…title…story. Completely unrelated? That part was lost on me.
Let’s ignore the title though, because the rest is lovely. I’m from the Bay Area and your story captures the good and bad of city life so perfectly.
I love this, “I love this city, I don’t want cancer.” You think like me…this is exactly the sort of thought process that goes through my head.
This is a jaunty little piece of writing that I really enjoyed reading. Keep it up please. Thank you.
The story is beautifully written but left my wondering what it was about. The bit about cancer was out of left field. Is this just a day in the story?
“I don’t know if (I?) can even…”
Well, it’s pretty good. I don’t even mean relativly speaking by the standards of what people on Urbis normally put up. I’m sorry if that’s insulting, the intention wasn’t. That’s the thing about blind reviewing you can be a bastard because you don’t know if it’s someone you despise or your best friend. You just say what you say. But overall, it was good.
My biggest complaint was the pacing, the way you introduce the woman first, telling us a hundred little things about her. It’s not the best way to introduce a charcter in what goes on to become a first person story. It’s not just because it’s nontraditional, but because- at least in the way you do it- it’s simplay bumping in jarring. Readers, even smart readers will probably wind up going back up to a previous paragraph and looking for some reference to who this person suddenly narrating the story is and find nothing. A smoother way to incorporate both might be to spend some time in the last half of the second paragraph using ‘we’. Describe actions the couple(or the two friends, you’re not entirely clear on their relationship, but it does lean much more heavily to lovers than friends) do together. Even simple things like going to Sunday brunch together or where they like to eat together, the kind of movies they rent and watch together. It’s subtle and moves the focus from her to us to finally you when the first person narration starts. Otherwise you wind up with this jarring moment of a sudden disorientation, a question you ask of the story- is it about the girl or the guy? It’s about both, and their interactions, wonderfully so. There’s something really powerful about slice-of-live stories in general and relationship ones in the specfic. They can remind you that every day life can be beautiful and fun and moving just as much as the big dramatic moments. That the celebration can happen every day, so to speak. So I like the idea and I like the story and it’s charcters, but that’s very jarring.
Your dialogue is also a bit weak, one in particular moment sticking in my craw, the ‘Life Goes On’ comment. When your narrator says nevermind he goes on to explain he’s glad she didn’t get the reference, but doesn’t explain if it’s because he felt his comment was stupid in some way or if it’s because he’s just glade that she’s outside of the cultural stream of the reference. If you’re going to be vauge in one area, do it all the way. Cut down the length of the description, just say something like ‘Nevermind’, I said, glad to end it there. or ‘Nevermind,’ I said, smiling to myself. Or just smiling. Have faith in your readers, we’re not (all) dumb. Give us a little credit and something we can really sink our teeth into. Other than a few other things similar to that complaint, good story, nice back and forth dialouge, scans well and sounds fairly realistic, all of it building to a wonderful closing.
(a quick add. I loved the last sentence, I couldn’t tell if there was some implication that he had cancer, but was happy to still be alive or if it was just a throwaway sort of way of saying ‘I’m happy to be alive and where I’m at’ which is how I took it. There’s no way to make it better without fucking up the Perfect Beauty of the line, so like the best art, I’d recommend you leave it intact and leave it for your readers to take what they want from it.)
I liked this very much. It’s like a lazy afternoon sitting in an outside cafe, or a park, lazily evesdropping on the table next to you. I found it very soothing.
And then I read the last line. I understood it further, and love it more.
I loved the piece overall, the descriptions were beautiful and captivating.
My only problem is that I didn’t understand the title at all, I don’t know how it connects to the story. The definition of halogen somewhere in the beginning seems unnecessary.
The ending left me with a sense of foreboding, kind of a wistful way to end the story. I liked it very much
First things first what is withthe title. It just doesn’t fit the piece. Did you do that to grab attention? Maybe I missed something in the story that hinted at the title of this piece. That being said onto the review of the work itsself.
Overall it is a well written piece. I don’t think I found any misspellings or typo’s or gramaticals errors, but I’m not expert so don’t take my word for it. I try not to check spelling and things of that nature. I go more for content and what the piece is actually saying rather then how it is worded ect. This piece has a very good story line. I’m assuming by the reviewer’s notes that it is just a day you had.
The descriptions you use are wonderful. I could easily picture the little scenes playing out in my mind, just by how you said them. Each paragraph was in itsself a story on it’s own. That makes th ewhole piece even better to read in my opinion.
The only thing I found confusing other then the title of the piece, was te fact that in te begining you are talking about a women and then in the middle you throw yorself in there with her. We have no transition to her being by herself to there being two people that this story is about.
When I fifrst read the title I thought this would be a short story about your opinion on the current war and politics. I was surprised by what I found instead. That it is somewhat of a love story. That it is about the time you spend with this women. The interactins between the two of you.
Overall I liked this piece very much. It can stand alone as it does now or it can be incorporated intoa longer story. The longer story being more about the relatinship or just more of the days the two spend together.
I think you should work on ths more and try to develope it into a longer story. As it is it has great potential to be more. That is just an opinion, the final decision is up to you.
Beth
That story was well written and the dialogue flowed nicely. Good job on the way you brought out pieces of the city into the story, how you made it a thread in these people’s lives. I enjoyed this. Thank you.
your title gives an interesting hook, but be very careful with that. it can make the reader angry enough so they might miss the entire peice just being inflamed.
the story opens well, and is descriptive and well written. while the title does perhaps do it justice in a tongue-in-cheek way, i really think that you might want to find something that will get your readers hooked with their minds still open.
The story really held my interest. You’ve developed so much of it really nicely. Your descriptive language is good – you have the eye for detail that keeps the reader interested, and the story keeps flowing.
I would like to see just a little more descriptive language in a couple spots. Like when the two stop to eat at Firefly. It seems like something is missing. You write how he tries to convince her that they won’t make the show, then suddenly she’s telling him that he ate too much. It feels like it would be better to describe something in-between those two events.
I like how you end this piece. The guy sort of reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes type, someone who uses deductive reasoning to assess people and things around him.
Keep writing – your style is good!
Showing 1 - 10 of 26
Next →
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
