Archive for the ‘Edd Vick’ Category
Give Me a Happy Ending Any Old Day
Monday, October 4th, 2010
It started with An American in Paris, that Gene Kelly movie. My dead mother, who had never left Des Moines in her life, was in the café scenes watching Gene and singing along to “S’Wonderful”. She loved that film.
Good for her, I say. And good for Kellie Manx, my high school sweetheart, for appearing in the books of Mark and John in the Bible. She’s the one walking on the water with Jesus, instead of Peter. Somehow I always thought she’d be the sort to do that.
Constantin Dinescu, a fellow clerk at the law firm where I work, got run over last week and wound up in an old Woody Guthrie song. I don’t really know if it’s appropriate or not; we didn’t talk that much.
Hold on a minute. I guess that means Kellie’s probably dead. Bummer.
I’ve asked around, and nobody else is noticing their dead relatives and friends showing up in books or movies or songs or whatever. They look at me kind of weird when I ask, too, like maybe I’ve been smoking the wrong stuff.
I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to make a buck at this. My first plan was to bet a guy in a bar that my mom was a film star, then show her the movie. But she’s only in that one movie, so far as I can tell, and it isn’t that big a part, and I probably wouldn’t win much that way anyway.
My second plan was to sell the rights, kind of like insurance, I guess. I went to Trevor, my best bud, and said that for a c-note I’d stick him into Spider-Man comics. At first he thought I’d got a writing gig, but when I explained it to him he just laughed.
I don’t have a third plan yet. I’m still working on it. Don’t invite me to any horror movies, though. My dog died recently and I really don’t want to see him in one.
Grayer
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
There are two stairwells at either end of the hallway outside your new apartment. You take the one in front for the first week. The weekend comes, and you want to explore the back yard, so you take the steps in back.
Two flights. Four. Six, and you should be on the ground floor, but there’s no exit, just more stairs leading down. Did you miscount? Or is there a basement exit? But no, only more flights of stairs weaving back, then forth, lit by the same weak fluorescent tubes at each landing.
Down you go, envisioning some egress into a rumrunner’s cave, maintenance tunnels, or a disused subway station. Just as it is getting – you think – ridiculous, you reach the bottom. There are no more stairs leading down, there’s a door.
It leads to the street, as if you’d walked out the front door. Not thinking, you let the door close behind you. There’s a finality to its click.
It’s gray. Like the day is overcast, or there’s more smog in the air. But the sun is up there, only weaker. When you open the door again, there’s the front lobby, not the stairwell you left.
Days go by, and it never gets brighter. Everything is subdued, colors washed out, animals sluggish, people less animated. As the days go by you feel it too, this creeping lethargy.
You’ve been living in what looks like your old apartment; there is no other ‘you’ in this world, if it even is a different world. You avoid the back stair.
Until you don’t.
The day comes when you feel that a change, any change, is better than the eternal gray surrounding you. You plod down the hall, open the door, and gaze down the stairs. They seem to go on forever, and it sure looks dark down there.
You take one step, then another, wishing this were the kind of world where stairs could lead upwards.