Man Out of Time
By Matt Springer

This is how men die, Paul Freemont mused on a rainy Tuesday morning.
            Men die, mused Paul, as their souls drip away onto the firmly-carpeted floor of a nondescript office building. Men die, mused Paul, in cubicles.
            Also, men die by gunshot, or beating, or an overdose of pills. They are smacked into gelatin by a semi truck going eighty miles per hour. They are stabbed through the heart by a two-timing woman. They drown.
            Paul Freemont's ambition, then, sat firmly on the dividing line between how men die, and how men REALLY die.
            He reclined in a poorly-made Office Depot desk chair. By virtue of his twenty-seven years with Intertech Ltd., he had earned a "primo spot," as his supervisor Brett was fond of saying: He had a window at his back, and that window looked out onto the parking lot.  
            A nice cubicle. Well-earned, even. But still a cube.
            He checked the clock: 12:30 p.m. He would be late.
            He logged off his computer, grabbed his car keys, and drove to Applebee's.

            "Were you followed?"
            "Seriously?"
            "Yeah. SERIOUSLY. Were. You. Followed?"
            "Nope."
            Paul took a gigantic swallow from his Dr. Pepper. Across the table, Gabriel Shenk narrowed his eyes to tiny slits. Paul stifled a laugh, and then suddenly became powerfully serious.
            "This isn't a game. I'm sincere."
            "You think I'm not?"
            Gabirel removed what appeared to be an ornate dagger from inside his trenchcoat.
            "What are you, crazy?! Put that thing away."
            "It's my weapon of choice," Gabriel whispered. He ran the blade across his tongue.
            "Careful. You'll cut your tongue."
            "It's not sharp. It's a Lord of the Rings replica letter opener. But it stabs real good."

            There seems to be a threshold in the human brain beyond which the idea of continuing to exist holds no discernible interest.
            It doesn't necessarily manifest as a heaving, dramatic urge to throw one's body in front of an oncoming train. It sometimes emerges as quiet resignation—a slight numb tingle in the heart, an emptying of the head.
            Paul's head had emptied itself at some point between his 43^rd and his 47^th birthdays. This much he had discerned, in the long nights as he lay awake in the king-size bed he used to share with That Bitch Cheryl.
            TBCheryl had left him on his 41^st birthday (yes, literally ON his birthday) to tour Europe and parts of central Asia with the lead singer of a Led Zeppelin cover band, who she had met when they played occasional live sets at that bar in the strip mall by the bank.
            At first, Paul was upset, then resigned, then idiotically hopeful. He wasn't a bad-looking guy, and he had a well-paying job and a nice house, which he carefully divested of any signs of his ex-wife's existence.
            He went to singles nights. He joined church groups for fortysomethings, even though he wasn't particularly religious, or even practicing. He met women in bars in strip malls by banks.
            Nothing…happened.
            He grew fat. He got lonely.
            His head emptied itself, and one morning, he woke up and wasn't sure—sure if he cared if he lived or died, sure if anyone else cared much either, sure if he could just end the numb, at least that would be SOMEthing.
            He placed an ad, and the ad brought Gabriel.

            "First, we discuss terms," Gabriel said as he gently placed the Lord of the Rings letter opener onto the Applebee's tablecloth.
            "Ten grand."
            "That is…unacceptable."
            "It's all I've got."
            "It's not enough."
            "I'll get someone else."
            Paul dropped a dollar onto the table for the Dr. Pepper, and rose to leave. He was halfway down the aisle, about to pivot past three old ladies and two mothers with cloying babies, when Gabriel called out.
            "Fine."
            "What's that?" Paul put his hand up to his ear and cupped it, a mocking pantomime of "I can't hear you."
            "I said, FINE. God."
            Smirking a little, Paul sat back down.

            The ad had appeared in a single issue of the Treasure Chest, one of those local rags filled with coupons and advertorials and classifieds looking for play dates. It read like so:

WANTED: Operative for discrete initiative. Someone unafraid to dirty hands. Pay is competitive. Contact corvette22341@yahoo.com for details, or call 40

The Chest's "editor," really a mother of three living in a ranch house with ambitions to become Central Florida's answer to Tina Brown, had accidentally omitted most of the phone number.
            Paul only got one e-mail, which was almost a relief, as he had started to regret placing the ad at all, and had begun considering other options. But he didn't want other options.
            See, Paul wanted to die, but he didn't want to kill himself. The mere thought made him nauseous.
            He wanted someone ELSE to do it. That seemed expedient.

            "How do you want to go, Mr. Bond?"
            The fake name was Paul's idea; the choice of name was Gabriel's. He adopted a laughable German accent as he used it—"Meester Baahnd."
            "I don't care. What sounds good to you?"
            Paul was joking (sorta) but Gabriel wasn't. Frankly, Gabriel seemed incapable of joking.
            "Poison."<br>            The word hung like a bad fart, and Paul focused on his shrimp basket for a moment before continuing.
            "Just figure it out and do it, okay?"
            "You're not much fun, Meester Baahnd."
            "Right back atcha."

            Paul didn't want to know when, or how, he would be murdered. He just wanted it to happen, and then…well, then, nothing. He just wanted it to happen.
            So he slid a plastic Publix bag across the Applebee's table. The bag had a plain white envelope inside. The envelope contained $5,000 in small, unmarked bills.
            "I wear this jacket at all times," Paul said. He held up a matted blue Members Only coat, a gift from That Bitch Cheryl for Christmas 1993. "I will keep the other $5,000 inside the pocket of this jacket. You can take it from me when the job's done."
            "I like the way you think, Meester Baahnd. In another life, we might have been friends."
            "I doubt it." Paul slipped on the jacket and headed for the door. Behind him, Gabriel called out for Paul's half of the tab, but Paul pretended not to hear him.
            For a while, Paul sat in his car in the parking lot, crouched down low in his seat, peering out at the Applebee's door from a corner of the window. He wondered if Gabriel would try to follow him and do it now—why he wondered, and why he waited to find out, would only become clear the next morning.

            That morning dawned thick and clammy. The instant Paul rose from bed, a single trickle of sweat beaded its way down the center of his back. He wanted to believe it was simply a matter of the clammy heat, the stationary fan on the ceiling above, and the ever-crapping-out air conditioner.
            He showered, and as he showered, he could not resist the urge to constantly draw aside the shower curtain and glance at the bathroom door, as if he expected it to burst open at any moment. His ears strained for any hint of an unusual noise that might predict a home invasion.
            He laughed to himself, though, as he tied his shoes and packed his lunch. Home invasion would be the most idiotic way to—
            BANG.
            A boot slammed into Paul's front door. Being cheaply manufactured from pressed wood, the door gave up quickly. A large black combat boot—along with the foot inside and attached body—were thus unable to kick the door down and enter the house with a macho swagger.
            Instead, the boot entered the door by its lonesome and stayed there, trapping the foot along with it. Paul paused for a split-second, listening to Gabriel's frustrated grunts and the arrhythmic tap-tap-tapping of his free foot on the front porch.
            Then Paul ran. Hard.

            In the years to come, Paul would occasionally reach for a reason why his self-preservation instincts had suddenly kicked in with a vengeance, there in his house on that morning. After all, it had been his own idea to have himself assassinated. It was his choice from the beginning, to the extent that he even withdrew ten grand from his 401K under the guise of "home repairs" with which to pay a sad, pathetic loser to end his life.
            The truth was, even though he couldn't think at the moment of a decent reason to keep on living, he realized under mild threat of death that a reason would probably present itself eventually. Until then, he certainly had no overwhelming motivation to die, and especially not to die in this way—clumsily murdered by the poor man's Luca Brasi, who would then reach into a jacket older than himself and score five grand for his troubling absence of morality.
            What cinched the deal wasn't anything as melodramatic as a life flashing before Paul's eyes—instead, what played inside his brain was the opening credits of an episode of Dateline on some future Saturday night:

Tonight on Dateline…

He paid to die…at the hands of a college dropout obsessed with Lord of the Rings. One man's sad assassination…and the pathetic assassin that ended his life, not even worth more than ten thousand dollars.

The Letter-Opener From Hell…after this break.

He would not be the victim in THAT episode. Please, God, no. He would gladly provide a corpse for the "Cheating Casanova Gets His" episode, or even the "Selfless Samaritan Risks All" episode.
            But not the "Crappy Murder Suicide Whatever" episode. Even Stone Phillips couldn't make that sound appealing.

            The car was parked in the front driveway, but Paul figured he could still reach it if he crept carefully along the far side of the house. As he stepped onto the back patio, he could hear the final throes of Gabriel's battle with the door.
            "Gaad…damned…stupid…boot…OUT!"
            The distant sound of flesh collapsing on concrete, a low-hissed "Fuuuuck," then a muffled tumble moving through the house as Gabriel ransacked the place for Paul.
            Paul was turning the ignition key in his Honda Civic when Gabriel emerged from his bedroom window and leapt down onto the hood of his car. Paul started the car, then spun it backward into the street. Gabriel, naturally, clung to the hood.
            A buzzing pulsed in Paul's temples. It sped through his veins and bounced up and down his body, from toe to forehead.
            Life, he suddenly realized, is REALLY for the living.
            Meeting Gabriel's glance for a split-second, he floored it. Gabriel managed to stay fastened to the hood, but not for long; a half-block later, he had toppled sideways onto the street.
            Paul went to work and died 42 years later, of natural causes.

Lipstick Vogue

By Matt Springer

             They were leaning up against a crate of eight-dollar footstools, swooning with the mingled scent of sweat and WD-40, 3 a.m. mania driving their bodies together, his sawdust-stained hands groping under the faded orange apron to fondle her breasts. He pushed his lips upon hers, tongue finding tongue. His fingers reached upward to run his fingers through her long strawberry blonde hair.
              There was something transcendent in that moment...until they leaned a step too far, nudging the crate against the emergency exit. The burglary siren went off briefly, and she gently pushed him away.
            "My break is almost over," she sighed, straightening her blouse. "Um…I'll see you, right?"
            "Sure," he replied, grinning like a guy with an unsatisfied erection that won't go away for at least twenty minutes. "I'll see you."
            "Cool," she said. She kissed him on the cheek and strode off. He watched her ass as she walked away. It was, for lack of a better word, perfect.
            Two days later, as he stood in his bedroom combing his hair in the mirror, he thought of her again. He could still taste her--raspberry lip gloss, mingled with Dr. Pepper and a hint of the burritos they'd picked up for dinner from El Famous. It was the taste of abandon, of endless promise barely concealed beneath her Abercrombie tank tops and Old Navy capris. It tasted like summer.
            "My name is Ralph," Ralph said to himself, staring deep into his own eyes, "and I'm in love with Denise from Bath Fixtures."

            He smiled a tiny smile in acknowledgement of his proclamation, then bounded off to work at the always-open Home Depot on North Avenue.
            He was only 19, and he was only home until August, so his parents didn't have much of a problem with him working all night. They knew where he was, and there wasn't much chance for drunken debauchery on the job. He took any shift they'd give him. The work was boring at best, awful at worst. But he tolerated it because he was fascinated by the people--the busy career addicts whose only free time came at 2 a.m., the bartenders who came in straight from work in their leather pants, the homeless guys who wandered through the store for hours until a manager evicted them from Paints.
            His co-workers, too, were a mixed bag of eccentrics. He assumed that one had to be fairly odd to be willing to work anywhere overnight, let alone a Home Depot. But their strangeness made them real, more real than the pretentious pricks he hung out with at school.
            And no one was more real than Denise. They first met when he'd started in mid-May. His manager Brian had escorted him through the store for most of the evening, introducing him to people and procedure. When he first saw her, she was bent over a display toilet, reaching into the drain to pull out old gum. From day one, that ass captivated him. It pulled him into its orbit.
            Brian called her name, and Denise stood, slow-motion like a scene from a movie. She flipped her hair back, that long strawberry blonde hair, and she rubbed her hands over her apron. It tightened against her body as flecks of stale Wrigley's stuck to it.
            "Nice to meet you," she said, extending one of her hands. He shook it and noticed that her nails matched her eyes--pale blue. "Sorry about the gum."
            "I don't mind," Ralph said, wilting in her gaze, watching his own face and the lawn care products behind him reflected in her retina. "I like gum."
            It was, he later commented as he told the story to friends, an incredibly awful thing to say. But as he would always add, that was the kind of woman Denise was--the kind who makes you say awful things.

            "Dude, that's so sweet," Packrat said to Ralph as they inventoried screws in aisle eight. "That is so totally sweet."
            Packrat was the ideal best friend for a summer spent working at Home Depot. He rarely showed an interest in Ralph's life outside of the store. Mostly they talked about movies, or hot actresses, or Packrat's many stories of weird things he'd done while under the influence in college. Ralph only knew that Packrat lived with his sister somewhere near Wicker Park and that he spent all of his free time buying cheap crap at garage sales and reselling it on Ebay.
            "What are you going to do?" Packrat put down his bin of screws and looked hard at Ralph. "This is big shit."
            "It's not a big deal," he replied with forced nonchalance. "We just made out."
            "Denise is so hot, man. She is totally hot. It is such a big deal. You have to ask her out. Take her somewhere nice."
            "I suppose I should," Ralph said. "It's the least I can do."
            Inside, his heart leapt at the confirmation of his deepest desires. He should ask her out.
            Then his brain started sprinting around inside his skull. Ask her out?! How? Where? When? Invite this vision of perfection and her beautiful ass to join him for the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl at Olive Garden? It seemed unreal.
            "Hey Ralph," Denise said. She'd approached them quiet, like a cat, and was now standing on her tippytoes between Ralph and Packrat. Behind her back, Packrat was making obscene gestures that suggested either a small mole trying to claw its way out of his mouth or blowjobbery.
            "Hey Denise," Ralph said. Brilliant retort, he thought.
            "I found this hammer in Fixtures. Brian told me to give it to you and you'd put it back."
            "Right, of course. My pleasure."
            Her paltry gaze was intoxicating to Ralph. He saw things in it that he would later come to realize were never there. But Ralph was in college, and thus, he was stupid. Besides, Denise was everything college wasn't--sultry, mysterious, and all too willing to offer up breasts.
            "Hey, Denise..."
            "Yeah, Ralph?" She turned as she was walking away.
            "You want to...Would you like to..."
            "You wanna go out with Ralph?" Packrat blurted out. Denise giggled.
            "Sure. That'd be fun."
            She left him there, the guy with the hammer and the hard-on, already tasting garlic-drenched breadsticks and raspberry lip gloss.

            He picked her up in his brother's Sentra.
            "Asswipe, you get one drop of bodily function on these seats, and you are so fucking dead," his brother quipped as he left the driveway. It didn't sound like a quip--actually, it was more like a bald threat--but it was the closest the guy ever came to quipping, so Ralph supposed it counted as such.
            Ralph was thinking these things--thinking too much, to be perfectly honest--as Denise climbed into the Sentra. She was wearing a tight little baby tee that had the word "Princess" stitched across the front. The word seemed as though it were struggling for freedom from the shirt.
            "Hi, Ralphie," Denise said. Ralphie. Cute nickname. Surely, that could only be a good thing.
            "Hey, Denise-y," Ralph responded. For a split second, he regretted it. Then Denise giggled. It was a stupid joke, but an easy laugh, and Ralph was glad for it.
            Ralph guided the Sentra through the streets of Skokie and into the Olive Garden parking lot. As usual, there was a wait of over an hour. For whatever reason, the residents of the northern suburbs of Chicago, IL had long ago decided that the ideal spot for any first date, last date, birthday celebration, family gathering, Army buddy reunion, baptism, bris, wake, Easter parade or Arbor Day observance was the Olive Garden at Lincolnwood Town Mall. Fortunately, Ralph had a connection.
            "Man, it is awesome to see you!" Mike, his best friend from high school, shook Ralph's hand fiercely. Within moments they'd bypassed the impatient throng and scored a primo spot near the window. It offered only a view of the parking lot and the equally busy Red Lobster next door, but still, it was a window.
            "I just love their breadsticks," Denise cooed.
            "Me too," Ralph replied.
            Immediately, an uncomfortable silence descended over the conversation. It was awkward. It was odd. It was a first date.
            "So, you go to school?" Denise finally asked.
            "Yeah, I do," Ralph said. Duh.
            "That's cool. I'm gonna start at Moraine in the fall."
            "Neat. What are you gonna study?"
            "Massage therapy."
            Ralph nearly fainted.
            Then the server came, and it was time to order. Ralph went for his usual, the Tour of Italy, a magical plate containing chicken parmesan, fettucine alfredo, and lasagna. As they waited for their meals, Ralph scarfed down more than his share of breadsticks and took on a second helping of soup. Denise matched him bite for bite--another great sign. Ralph loved a girl who knew how to eat.
            "So, do you date at school?" Denise asked between mouthfuls.
            "A little bit. Girls don't really pay much attention to me."
            "I can't imagine why." Denise smiled that funny smile, the one that made him want to say awful things, like "I love you" and "Let me touch you" and "Are you going to finish your veal ricotta?"
            The meal ended. They left; they had a 9:30 show to catch.
            "I don't really want to see the movie," Denise said as she took Ralph's hand into hers on the way to the car. "Let's go to the park."
            Ralph loved that idea. It made his heart pound, his pants heat up, and his stomach gurgle.

            Riverview Park was just a few miles away, and Denise held his hand the whole way over. They joined a few other autos in the parking lot, each of them alive with the requisite steamed windows and rollicking chassis.
            Ralph switched off the engine but left the battery on. He let the lights shine; the green of his interior console cast a pretty light onto Denise. He turned on the radio and pressed buttons until he found Delilah, the local lite rock romance maven. She was playing "You Are So Beautiful To Me" by Joe Cocker.
            Denise's hand settled on Ralph's upper thigh. Again Ralph's spine trembled. Again his stomach churned. The Tour of Italy wasn't agreeing with him. He only hoped he could supress all his gas until the evening's encounter was complete.
            "This is a pretty song," Denise said.
            Ralph hated Joe Cocker.
            "Yeah," he replied.
            Denise smiled. She moved in toward Ralph, hesitatingly, stopping once or twice. This made her giggle. She leaned over the small plastic hump placed strategically between their two car seats.
            Ralph was ready. Ralph was willing. Ralph was able.
            Then Ralph threw up. His Tour of Italy returned to America in a dangerous way. He had the presence of mind to try and catch most of it in his hands, but there was just too much. The projectile vomit cascaded over Denise's face; it slid quickly down her rosy cheeks, poured down onto her chest, and threatened to slip between her perfect raspberry lips. Her shirt was drenched by it and her white jeans forever stained.
            Horrified, Denise fumbled for the door handle, slapped it open, sprinted away from the car.
            "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she screeched.
            As Ralph held his own spit-up in his open palms, he watched her vanish into the darkness, stumbling toward the White Hen across the street.
            The next morning, Ralph got a job at Borders.

My brother can be an asshole.

            I guess all brothers CAN be assholes. That's pretty much what defines a brother: the fact that you share the same genes, he's got a penis, and sometimes he's just an asshole. They're bigger assholes probably to other brothers than they are to sisters like me, but still. 

            One time, like four years ago, the fam went to Orlando and the horrific Walt Disney World, for what our mom tearfully termed "our last vacation as a family." Only we didn't really make it as a family, at least for big parts of it; Jason (the aforementioned occasional asshole that is my brother) had just graduated high school and kept running off to do his own thing. I was going through my whiny brat pre-teen phase, so I insisted on going with him. Mom, being Mom, made Jason take me.

            We were walking into Epcot when said he had to go to the bathroom. I waited on a bench outside. And waited, and waited, and waited. Next I saw of him, he was making out with an churro vendor outside World Showcase.

            He didn't see me. I cried, a little, then I took a boat to Disney MGM and rode the Tower of Terror for six consecutive hours.

            That night, I was waiting outside the restaurant when we were supposed to meet my parents. They didn't see me get there alone, and I didn't say a word. Then Jason and I didn't speak for seven months.

            Anyway. My brother can be an asshole, as I've said. But nothing, not a goddamn thing in his history of assholedom, prepared me for his most assholiest of acts. He actually got engaged to Tiffani Clarke.

 

Yes, THE Tiffani Clarke. Underline it, bold it, whatever. I personally prefer the all-caps "THE" preceding her name. As if I'd say the name, and you'd think of some other Tiffani Clarke who you knew in high school, and I'd be correcting you.

            "No, not that Tiffani Clarke. THE Tiffani Clarke."

            Pop star. Up and coming actress. Creator of her own line of budget lip gloss. Enemy to all truth everywhere. And my brother would be stumbling down the aisle with her.

            I found out the way I find out about most things re: my brother. My mom told me.

            I walked into the kitchen one seemingly normal Sunday afternoon and she was sitting alone at the seemingly normal kitchen table. She was staring at an issue of People that was probably a month old. Tiffani Clarke was on the cover, holding a tiny dog close to her head and cooing in the blurb, "I haven't found love yet. I hope I do someday. I think I deserve a prince."

            "Carrie?" she said, talking to me without looking up from the magazine. "Have a seat."

            Even though I was on the phone with Paula and just sneaking in for a Ho-Ho from the fridge, I sat down. She was creeping me out.

            "I have something to tell you."

            Creep factor suddenly off the charts. What could be up? Was Dad okay?

            "Shoot," I said, unwrapping my Ho-Ho.

            "Your brother just called…"

            "Oh yeah? How's Sin City?" He had gone to Vegas for the weekend. It was one of many post-college voyages he'd taken to that shithole of a town since getting his first job and actually having what some call "disposable income," but what I always thought of as "bills you flush down the g-string of some tarted-up part-time whore."

            "It's fine. He's having a good trip. A great trip."

            "Good…I guess."

            Then we said pretty much nothing for about two minutes. Mom stared at the mag. I finished my Ho-Ho.

            "Mom, is something…"

            "Your brother is engaged to Tiffani Clarke." She said it breathlessly, as though attempting to remove something heavy from her chest. After the sentence was over, she seemed instantly relieved.

            Then what was I supposed to say? How do you react to the news that your only brother, the guy who still occasionally enjoyed yanking the back of your underwear from out of your pants and delivering what he delicately described as an "ass-crack whoopin'," was going to marry the most famous face in the world? Where could I start? How did this happen?

            "How the fuck…"

            "Carrie, language." It was a common refrain from the Momster, but it lacked its usual threatening edge. It was almost like she couldn't be too pissed at me for uttering a sentiment she herself was harboring, pretty much with the exact same wording.

            "How the heck did this happen?"

            "I don't know. All I know is that he's going to be spending some time in Los Angeles, and…"

            "…He's bringing her home next weekend. To meet us."

            I pulled an old standard. I stomped to my room and slammed the door so hard that the goddamn wooden crucifix my parents won't let me take down fell behind the dresser, like it always does.

"I cannot fucking believe it," I told Paula, mere moments after the convo with Mom.

            "I wonder what she'll wear," Paula replied. "Probably next to nothing."

            "That skank."

            "Whore-ass."

            "Fucko."

            Then Paula paused, and for some reason, I had a sense she was going to say one of those things she always says that has almost nothing to do with the petty, vindictive girl she usually is. I like her because she's petty and vindictive, just like me. The other Paula…not so much.

            "Still, you have to be nice to her."

            "Why?" My face flushed red and suddenly I was angry again out of nowhere.

            "Because. She's not just, like, some bitch on the TV anymore. She's your brother's fiancé. She's almost  your sister-in-law. She's like close to family."

            This was a shocking turn of attitude for Paula. We were perfectly aligned in our hatred for all things popular and uncool, and Tiffani Clarke rested comfortably at the top of our list.

            Yes, we actually had a list. We called it the List of Shame, and we maintained this list on the inside front covers of our notebooks. We reserved spots on it for anything or anyone that was suffocating us beneath its lameness. And right near the top of the list, just beneath Dave Matthews and just above Joan of Arcadia, was Tiffani Clarke.

            (We'd even put together a little guerilla campaign of anti-Tiffani propaganda in our school. We made up these flyers with Tiffani's face on them, all plastic grins, and we put little pentagrams in her eyeballs and fangs in her mouth, and a single word above her head: "Bitch." Earned us a week of detention, but it was worth it.)

            Jesus Christ. Be NICE to her? To Tiffani Clarke? THE Tiffani Clarke???

            "Paula, please. I'm not gonna be all fake-sister-like and stuff just because my brother has some kind of delusion that he belongs with that skank."

            "Whore-ass."

            "Fucko."

            "I was a total ass to my older brother's fiancé for like the first six months she was around," Paula said. "And now, I really regret it. We have absolutely nothing in common, but she's nice enough."

            "Paula, you hate your brother."

            "Yeah, but his wife's not bad. Listen, whatever. Be weird. Treat her like shit. It's not my family. I'm just saying you should try to be nice if you can fathom it. That's all."

            Paula, as per usual, was right. But fuck her! Tiffani Clarke sucks. End.

 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think back to what Paula said throughout the week that followed. She's a smart chick and my best friend, and what she said made a bitter kind of sense. But thinking about it made me angry.

            That whole week, anything relating to Tiffani and Jason made me angry. Especially seeing their names alongside each other. They looked so goddamn…CUTE. It made me wonder what the media would call them…"Tason"? "Jiffani"? "The whore and the guy standing next to the whore with no idea what he's doing there"?

            See? Angry.

            The Thursday before the Big Meal, Mom asked me what I thought she should make.

            "I could do a whole turkey thing, or maybe something more casual, some burgers or chicken on the grill…what do you think?"

            "I think the slut can eat shit and live," I said.

            "Carrie! Watch your mouth." The yell had come from the family room, where my dad was curled on the couch with the remote in one hand and a Sports Illustrated from six months ago in the other.

            "You could be a lot more supportive, young lady," my mom said.

            "I could." And yet, I couldn't.

            I didn't really understand it, any of it. Why this was happening, how this was happening. Most of all, why I was so pissed off about it.

            I understood why I hated Tiffani Clarke. As I've said before, and will no doubt say again, she sucks. Totally. But was there more than that?

            Yes and no. I mean, the suckage of Tiffani Clarke is enough to make anyone hate the idea of her becoming someone who'd be showing up regularly for, like, Thanksgiving dinner and family cookouts. But if my brother was happy--

            That's when it hit me. I didn't want my brother to be happy. That is, I wanted him to be happy, but not with her. After all, he wasn't a stupid guy, even if he was often dumb. He'd introduced me to half the bands I liked, good hard-working bands that wrote songs and played guitars and didn't need to show ass cleavage to sell records. I even remembered the note he sent when I mailed him one of our Bitch Tiffani posters at college. "Give 'em hell," he had scrawled on a Krispy Kreme napkin stuffed into an envelope.

            It wasn't like him. It couldn't be him. And so, logically speaking, it had to be her. She'd seduced him, or tricked him, or somehow brainwashed him for evil reasons I could only imagine. Maybe this was some strange stunt designed to generate publicity. She wanted to seem normal and not some drugged-out whore from hell, so she yanked the cutest jock in a baseball cap she could find into a booth at some dance club and bam. One taste of the sugar and the kid was hooked.

            I had to confront her. I had to save him from thinking with his dick, and I had to make things clear to Bitch Tiffani. No one could fuck with my brother. Not even the self-dubbed "Queen of Pop."

           

Her Majesty and my asshole brother were forty-five minutes late for the Big Meal. The day before, Jason had dialed in with word from on high: dinner would be just him, the skank, and my parents. Tiffani had bought out my parents' favorite restaurant for the night (bought it out! the whole goddamn joint!) so they could get to know each other in privacy. I would meet Tiffani briefly when they arrived to pick up the parental units, but otherwise I'd be stuck at home with pizza and cable. And Paula, of course, who decided she couldn't let this moment pass without being present to commemorate it.

            "I can't wait to see her in person," she said. She was almost…excited? "It's gonna be freaky."

            "Yeah. Freaky." I hadn't told her about my plan. She'd think it was the worst idea I'd ever had. I just hoped she wouldn't have been right.

            So forty-five minutes after eight, a giant black SUV pulls into our driveway. Out pops my brother, wearing his usual uniform of baseball cap, long-sleeve shirt over T-shirt, and jeans. Only everything was newer somehow, crisper. Probably designer shit she'd bought for him in some Los Angeles shithole.

            Then she emerged, her own baseball cap pulled down low over her face, giant aviator sunglasses covering her eyes. The gulf between the bottom of her shirt and the top of her jeans was gaping. The eyes of both my father and my mother grew plate-like, though probably for different reasons. I don't know if they realized exactly what they were in for.

            The door opened. My mom rushed to hug Jason, leaving my dad to greet the skank.

            "Well, you look a little familiar…you look just like that singer…Tiffani Clarke! I bet you get that a lot!"

            My dad's a doofus.

            Still, I had to give the Tiffster credit. She giggled like a champ at the lame-ass joke. Then they switched, and my dad gave my brother a manly handshake while my mom reached her hand out to shake Tiffani's.

            "Tiffani, it's really great to meet you," Mom said.

            "Oh, Mrs. Bailey, it's so awesome to meet you too!" Tiffani lunged forward and grabbed my mom in a tight embrace. Stunned but pleased, Mom embraced right back.

            The slut was playing them like concert pianos, not that she could play a piano if her life depended on it. Then it was my turn.

            "You must be Carrie," Tiffani cooed. She had this noxious tone of voice when she said it, like she'd have pinched my cheeks if it were at all socially acceptable amongst unconsenting adults.

            "That's me," I said. She snared me in her deathly clutches too. She smelled like roses.

            "I'm Paula." That's Paula for ya. She doesn't miss a trick. She stepped right up and introduced herself, grinning like she'd just scarfed down a bowlful of shit. Tiffani smiled politely and returned a limp handshake.

            This was my moment. Introductions were done, and soon it'd be off to dinner, off to an absurd and idiotic future for Jason. I had to act. Now.

            "Listen, Tiffani, could I speak to you in private for a moment?"

            No one else had noticed me ask her, but Paula couldn't miss it--she was standing right there. She still grinned but she also glared at me. It made her look pretty fucking scary.

            "Uh…sure. Be right back, Jace!"

            Jace. She called him "Jace." Jason HATED to be called "Jace." But he didn't hate being called it by her, clearly.

           "Okay, honey dove."

            Yep. He called her honey dove. Hurl if you need to.

 

We stepped into my room and I shut the door behind her.

            "Listen, Tiffani, I'll make this quick."

            "Is that me?" I had purposely left up one of our Bitch Tiffani posters, in the hopes that it would help me get my message across, or at least make her uncomfortable.

            "Yep. It is."

            "Oh, that's so funny!" She laughed a little. Tough nut, this one.

            "I have to tell you something--"

            "I really like your bedspread. It's so cute." She sat on my bed like she lived here. I hated my bedspread.

            "Tiffani, stay the fuck away from my brother."

            The words hung. The slut's smile drifted away.

            "What did you say?"

            "Stay the fuck. Away. From my brother."

            She had heard me the first time, no question, but I guess it's not easy to process something like that coming from someone like me. I got the sense from her expression that she was really working out some intense inner conflict. You didn't have to be the chick's best friend to know that no one probably said things like that to Tiffani Clarke without an elbow in the face from a bodyguard, or at least a screaming call from some underling in her entourage. Yet here I was, the sister of her fiancé, saying something like that. Something unexpected, totally rude, and absolutely unwavering.

            She made a smart play, one I hadn't expected. She got up and headed for the door.

            "I better just go--"

            "No, you better leave my brother the fuck alone." I stepped between her and the exit. I was improvising now. None of this had been in the scenarios I'd imagined. When I'd thought about how it could go, as I did about once ever ten minutes after I'd decided to tell the whore off, part of me expected her to yell; another part expected her to blubber like a baby. None of me expected this.

            "Who the fuck are you, anyhow?"

            "I'm his fucking sister, and you're a fucking skank."

            "Fuck you."

            "Fuck YOU, Tiffani Clarke. Fuck your ass cleavage. Fuck your nonexistent clothes. Fuck your shit-stupid music and fuck your million-dollar tits and fuck your empty head. FUCK YOU."

            She was dumbfounded. I'd shamed her into silence. My face was red. I'd been yelling.

            She moved for the door, and I'll never know why, but I pushed her. I pushed her hard. The rest is a blur. I know she pushed back, and before I knew it we'd fallen to the floor along with the crucifix. I remember I was pulling her hair at the roots and she was clawing on my cheeks when we bumped into the dresser. A musical snowglobe fell and shattered and sprayed water all over us. "When You Wish Upon a Star" tinkled weakly from its innards.

            Then the door flung open, and Jason and my parents flew in, and the rest you can pretty easily imagine. 

           

Jason isn't speaking to me still, and the wedding's in June. My parents finally forgave me, maybe because they're getting a bit annoyed with being extras in the big-budget production that is THE Tiffani Clarke wedding. I caught Mom crying in the kitchen one day after Tiffani's wedding planner yelled at her on the phone for suggesting she'd buy her dress at J.C. Penney.

            A few weeks after the rumble, I got a package in the mail. Inside was an incredibly expensive digital camera and a handwritten note. "Hope we can be friends! Luv, Tiffani." I'd really been wanting a digital camera; Jason must have remembered from back when we actually talked. It was a really nice one too, much nicer than my parents could ever afford.

            I took the camera out of its bubble wrap, smashed it under the leg of my dresser, and mailed it back. It's going to be a long rest of our lives.

I'm an old man.

I remember when e-mail itself was a novel tool. I once received an e-mail forward that consisted of dirty sex fanfic pairing various cast members of the Brady Bunch together. This was in, like, 1994. I forwarded it onward, and then occasionally received e-mail from strangers telling me how much they enjoyed my fiction, and could I please send more?

Which is what inspires me to KEEP WRITING, every day.

Anyway. The internet and I, we go WAY back. Still, MySpace has vexed me for quite some time.

What do I do with it? Everyone I know already can reach me, and I can reach them. I don't really need to, like, TOTALLY share my innermost feelings with the world at large. That's what the bourbon is for. And I already have a blog where I document my feelings on nerdly things.

What to do, what to do?

So I've decided to use this here thang for two purposes.

1) I will post, as often as I can, my fiction. I was sticking it on Alert Nerd, but it feels weird there, like your grandma's clammy fingers on the back of your neck. (And yes, that is a preview as to the scintillating prose you can expect from me!)

2) I may post, occasionally, weird bits about my life, and pop culture at large, unless it's geeky pop culture, in which case, again, go here. Hell, go there anyway. It's fun.

So there. Do we both feel better? I think so.