brian s.ellis ([info]arvenbrille) wrote,
@ 2005-09-17 14:16:00
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Chapter the fifth
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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-17 07:17 pm UTC (link)
Nine Seventy Seven out of twenty is three pennies two dimes and a ten. Seven Forty Six out Ten is four pennies, two quarters and two ones. OR, 7.46 (10) 4 2(25) 2(ones). 13.75 (20) 1(25) 1(one) 1(five). His index finger first, middle, then index again, and the middle again if it's a four digit number. His thumb taps the server number, and with his pinky knuckle taps the total, poping the drawer open. 6.41 (20) 4 2(25) 1(5) 3(ones) 1(ten). His fingers are dancers on the register keys, magnets grabbing the change, gymnists plucking the bills and jugglers counting the change back. Desmond is deadly about the register. Eleven O'Clock sees a few regulars, Warren, Walter, Coach, and one or two lost travellers off the highway, usually men alone. It's difficult for Desmond, after the day starts but before it gets busy. This late morning in between throws him off, without a clear rhythm of moments Desmond can't manipulate the interaction of movements, the coustmers to him, him to the coustmers. By noon he is set free by the madness. The circus of the lunch rush has a science, a pattern, an art. In the morning, Terry and Teresa, two of the part timers, come in with Diana, a third, Tina, comes in at noon. The Route Nine is hit with a wave of faces, bodies, stomachs. Pete and Meadow are automotons now, the years of friendship paying off in their interplay. The building rattles and shakes with hundreds and hundreds of tiny indivdual noises climbing and groping over one another like stained glass pligrims pig-pling for god. The whine of the grill hangs like the smell of ground flesh. Everyone is yelling to hear over the noises of the yelling.
After eleven thirty the singles coming in peters out and it's mostly parites of two, often family memebers, untill twelve ten. The place is slapped with groups of three, four and occationally five. The Fire Department orders take out at one and the DPW boys take over the eight top in back at one forty five. Sometime in the afternoon Kenny comes in: shirtless, kahkis shorts, denim vest, gut the size of a buick, face the size of a honda, bobing his head, six inch beard dripping with sweat
"heaeey Duuudes!" Jethro Tull is in the walkman.
"Desmond, Desmond. hey man." Kenny says rapting the counter with one bubbling jigsaw fist.
"I found this tape in the ally behind the clinic," he went on, "with a movie on it called 'The Stuff' have you seen it?"
"No Kenny I haven't"
"Oh dude it's great! This guy finds some white powder on the street and takes it home and makes muffins out of it. And he gives the muffins to all his friends and like, pretty soon after they eat them these aliens from another dimention pop out of their mouths and eat their brains. Creepy huh?"
"Dizzy! Cash!" Pete screams, which is what he screams every time there is any kind of line at the register, as if Desmond doesn't know that there is.
"Excuse me, Kenny" Desmond says.
"Oh, hell yeah, sure, catch you later man."
Meadow shakes his head, "That man must be on drugs!" he yells.

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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-17 08:40 pm UTC (link)
Desmond's fingers cut through the air like they were slicing tomatos. The clock spreand wide, things slowed down. The Afternoon, full and warm and fuzzy, crawled under a four-top an fell asleep. The waitstaff joked around, Terry and Teresa leave, and Tom and Tailia show up. Pete and Tony Carvello argued about baseball, Meadow swept and shrink wrapped. Even the highway was drowsy. It weight dragged on the pockets under Desmond's eyes. The Sun, twists like an uneven screwdriver upon the Route Nine. It's three thirty three. A stranger, someone very different than anyone whose ever been in the Route Nine walks in. A man, slightly older than Desmond with wild, forgone black hair and rattled rattled eyes, wearing a beige three peice suit comes to Desmond's counter. He takes a long survey of the Route Nine. His eyes come at last to Desmond, with a bit of a start.
"Do you do take out?" he asks.
"Yes. What would you like?"
"Ah, ceaser salad with grilled chicken."
"sure, name?"
"Zenzer."
Nights at the Route Nine would get busy between five and six, larger parties would come in for early dinner, particularily on the weekends. At six the place closed and Desmond's day was done by seven. Desmond counts down the drawer and locks the register while everyone else sweeps and he quietly leaves.
Saturdays had always had a strange, frightening quality. Once home, Desmond nervously walked from room to room, as if he were looking for something. He kept bumping his head. His mood now was very different than it had been the past couple of nights. So far he had made three glue copies of his left hand and they hung over his bed on the wall. The sun settles under the horizon, the house gets dark. Desmond fears he is approaching a feverish state. He takes off his shoes and socks an grinds his toes into the thick carpeting.
"urnn" he whimpers
"uhmm"
"mmhn" His jaw is tight. His eyes hurt.
"unnh"
"Rrahha!"
The front windows of the cottage blink unexpectedly. A car pulls into the driveway and Desmond's anxiousness dissapiers, just like that. Desmond crawls to his feet and creeps to the window. On the other side of the glare of the headlights Shane yells,
"Desmond! hey, man! hey!"
There is someone in the passenger seat. A woman about the same age as Shane. Shane is red in the face. Desmond can only imagine the person in the passenger seat is Amanda. Shane leaves the car running and dashes for the door. Desmond is rolling down his sleeves when Shane opens the door.
"let me get a tie." Desmond says. Shane is full of fast. Bursting with sticky life.
"Amanda, this is pretty much my best frind now." Shane gesticulated wildly while swerving all over the road. He was eager that this meeting of past and present go well, and fills the car with alot of useless talk. It is quite unlike him. Mostly, Desmond wants them to change the radio station. Amanda has alot of dark make-up on around her eyes. Deep lipstick. Simple clothing, but she's bursting out of it, overflowing. She turns to shake Desmond's hand.
"Hello, My name is Desmond Monroe."
This is unusual. Desmond never saw this coming.
"I thought we'd go down to the boardwalk." Shane says, crashing about on the inky roads of Fisherman's Yards. Desmond feels a bit too old for this sort of thing. There is a teenage quality. A sensation comes on him, of being the only adult at a child's birthday party. The station wagon is a paper hat too small for him. Amanda is the noisemaker stuck in his mouth. She's talking, "...ended up with a really bad situation, I was afraid to pick up the phone, and he was sending me all these emails, I don't know, whatever. So ah, yeah right, so get this, I come home one day, and this is After I had returned the camera, and someone had Puked on my couch. And thrown my photo album in the toilet! My personal album with pictures of my mom and everything."
"Wait, was it the guy?" Shane asks
"Well, I mean, it Had to be."
"But you don't know for sure?"
"Fucking A! You don't believe me?"
"No, I believe you. Why would you say that?"
Amanda laughs, "You haven't changed at all Shane."

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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-17 10:30 pm UTC (link)
Shane's station wagon is at last ten years old and the steering wheel is the hard thin plastic kind that they don't make anymore. It's dark green, with a silver stripe around the edge. Desmond really likes the color of the stripe. Speaking of strange colors, they had come out of the darkness and crashed into the light of the Hump. Orange, like the sky over downtown always is. Centre Street becomes a two lane one way street and wraps itself around every tourist trap before heading back to town. Desmond has second thoughts about the night. They're coming down the hill toward the Arcade and the Star of the Sea Hotel. Things brush over Desmond's eyes like alunimum foil. The Air is wet. Desmond can feel his muscles tighten. Shane's talking,
"We come down here, alot yeah, It's just about the only time me and this guy go out. I'm so sick of every one, I've just, hell."
"Desmond, can I ask you a question?" Amanda asks
"absolutly"
"Are you gay?"
"Not that I'm aware."
Shane snorts
"What? What? Did I say? I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it." She blurts out.
"I don't see what there's to be sorry about." Desmond replies.
"Jeasus Amanda" Shane mutters. He wades the car through the yellow lights of the storefronts and the red lights of the cars blinking and.
"I've got like, twenty girlfriends who I could hook you up with if you want, Desmond. I mean, that's why I ask." She suddenly tells him.
"I met you only moments ago."
"I know. But I'm like, a really good judge of character, and you're friends with Shane, and hey, I'd bone you." Amanda cackles in sharp tugs. Shane laughs stiffly.
"Are we going to hit the bar or what?" Amanda asks.
Desmond shifts forward in the backseat smiles, "Lets go play some pool."

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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-18 07:16 am UTC (link)
Shane drops the car on a street a block from the lights and the hubbub. The place looks empty from the outside and worse from the inside. When they walk in, each of them feel as though they have the place all to themelves.
"Shit." Amanda says playfully. She orders a shot for herself and Shane. She produces money out of a small cream colored purse around her arm. She buys Desmond a beer. He's not paying attention, he's thinking about walls of the bar, Kujo's. He likes the thick emerald light. He likes the overly treated wood, which is waxy to the touch. It reminds him of being inside a midevil treasure chest with a brass lock and leather straps.
Shane is saying, "I remember very clearly my father washing the car in the front driveway during the summer. The water would run along the side of the driveway towards the sewer drain. I remember watching the water form into what I thought of as tiny rivers, I watched them and thought about how, while my dad washed, they would appear, fill up, and dry out. They grew like living things. I imagined soceities, civilizations, growing and falling along the side of the river banks. I pictured myself a God, watching over. Whenever I played outside as a kid I was constantly mapping out in my head these histories of the places around me. A bush that I liked would become a castle that had survive so many wars, that sort of thing. Tiny areas of forest or beach would become vast expanses. And all the while I'd watch adults with their long legs and cars to watch. I thought they were missing out. They'd walk right by an area that had been fought over, and would never know. It bothered me. They didn't see the same value. And meanwhile, real, stupid wars were being fought over mile and miles of land, and I thought: If those adults saw how much was contained in every bit of their land, there would be no more fighting. But as you get older you not only lose ways of looking at things, you lose the ability to stop looking at things a certain way. Losing the ability to resist. And you see the same idea completely differently. You don't think of your child-self of being wrong, just, not understanding the question. Because it's not a question of finding and fitting in those vast expanses. That's not the question at all. Those vast expanses? They have, well, they've already..." He trailed off.
"I hated being a kid. Childhood was horrible." Amanda says.

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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-19 03:45 am UTC (link)
"May I borrow a cigaret?" Desmond asks.
Desmond slips out the back door to have a smoke. He steps off Kujo's back porch unto the beach. The tide is out. All he can hear is the sea. He wanders out making odd steps. Long steps, looking at his feet. Never noticing the man watching him.
"hey." Zenzer Dodd says, "hey, I know you. I saw you today."
Desmond nearly screams. But doesn't, instead, he says, "ahah-un-urm, hey."
"I'm Zenzer remember? Probably not. You work at the Route Nine."
"un-yeah, I mean, yes. Yes, indeed."
"I just moved here." Zenzer tells him.
"I'm aware."
"I'm a dressmaker."
"Oh."
"Can I bum a butt?"
"I borrowed this one."
"Oh."
"You don't believe me."
"Does anyone ever believe anyone anytime anyone's ever said that?" Zenzer Says
"No." Desmond replies.
"So." Zenzer says.
"It was very nice to meet you, Zenzer Dodd."
"We've already met."

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[info]arvenbrille
2005-09-20 06:54 pm UTC (link)
I'm not sure who took this photograph, there's a good chance it was Calvin Lee, or Francis Dignan

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