Mini Coopergasm, Part II

The thrilling conclusion!

*****

Zena took her place and sat down. It wasn’t so bad, she had to admit. The leather seats were comfortable enough, at least. Nothing jabbing or poking here. And there were a lot of dials. For all she knew, Zena might have been at the wheel of a nuclear reactor.

“Here’s the key,” Chelsea chirped. “You just put it in the ignition and turn.”

Trembling, she did. The machine growled to life.

“Oh, Danny!” Renee moaned. Danny, as Zena had recently learned, was Renee’s current fling, a strapping stud too young for anything long-term but a lot of fun for the time being. The knowledge failed to put Zena’s mind at ease.

Chelsea sensed in Renee’s ecstasy an opportunity to get back into the transaction. “Now this vehicle comes with heated seats standard, and…”

“Heated seats!” Renee shrieked, still at least half in Danny’s clutch.

Zena, for her part, mostly tuned them both out. It had been years since she’d driven, and it required her full attention.

“…so you can feel that you’re doing something good for the earth,” she half-heard Chelsea drone as she put the car into reverse. That is reverse, right? She double checked, and it was. Check her progress in the mirror and—total blackness? No, they just weren’t adjusted. Zena slammed on the brakes, a completely unnecessary maneuver, as the car was traveling below walking speed, but still. She needed to stop to prevent an accident, and that would do it.

“Whoa, cowboy!” Renee shouted, back from her fantasy and annoyed about it. Zena ignored her and carefully adjusted the rear-view and side mirrors, before inching the car backwards once again.

“…accelerate from zero to sixty in…”

But Zena didn’t want to accelerate. She didn’t want to waste time in traffic jams, or parallel park, or negotiate with mechanics about brake lines, or be honked at for not running a yellow light, or run the yellow light out of fear of being honked at and run over a little kid.

“…just $43,995 to buy, or you can lease…”

Forty-four grand? Zena definitely had things she would rather use that money on. But Renee was insistent, and probably right. Maybe she would lease, and she wouldn’t technically be buying a car, at least. Of course, she would have to buy insurance. So, yeah, she was buying a car.

“…and you can see the power for yourself…”

Unless…

Car dealers are insured, right? They must be. With that much inventory, they’d be insane not to be.

Zena was still in the lot, rolling down the aisle of cars on either side without yet having the courage to actually depress the gas pedal. She did now, and spun the steering wheel to the left as she did so.

The airbags—driver and passenger side, and side curtains—worked, even though Chelsea hadn’t bothered to highlight that fact in her pitch. They didn’t need to, really; even with her late burst of speed, Zena wasn’t driving fast enough to injure anyone.

“Maybe driving isn’t the way you want to get noticed,” Renee muttered.

“No,” Zena admitted, concealing her glee.

She agreed to pay $3,000 to cover the dealer’s deductible and not buy a car ever.

It was the best deal she ever made.

True Lincoln Park Tales, #4: The Mini Coopergasm, Part I

Zena’s hand trembled just a bit as she put the key in the ignition.

In her suburban youth, she had ridden in cars. She had obtained and maintained driver’s license, and had been a committed driver out of necessity for several years. But she had never liked automobiles, and once she both lived and worked in an area of Chicago where public transportation is universal if not beloved, she sold her car with great relief.

She found herself at a car dealership now out of peer pressure. Zena had recently been promoted at her job, to a sales position with a cushy base salary, a solid bedrock of loyal customers, and tantalizing shoots of potential future growth. Blessed with an outgoing personality and an eminently trustworthy smile, Zena had clear potential, which was recognized by her boss Renee.

Zena got results in her first two weeks. Good results, even. But not, as Renee said, excellent results. “And excellence,” she declared, “is where you belong.”

“You need to manage your image,” Renee announced. Zena was perfectly good at making sales, she explained, but she needed to do more. She had to make not buying from her inconceivable. And to start, she had to make herself look amazing.

Renee boiled it down thusly: “Everyone wants to be successful. When you roll up at their office in a sweet ride, they know that they can be simply by buying whatever you sell. But they will never know that when you walk up to their office from the train, branded with the aura of bums and urine and failure.”

And with a flourish of girlish excitement, Renee invited herself on a car shopping trip that Zena didn’t realize she was planning.

They had already inspected a BMW and a Lexus, both of which Zena had pronounced “really an excellent car, but just not me.” Further analysis was beyond her. Zena really didn’t like any car, but Renee’s exuberance had the force of a general’s orders, so she resorted to weak indecision as her only glimpse of a way to wiggle out of buying one.

Renee knew just what to do. “I agree completely,” she declared. “Those were fine cars, but you are a woman who needs to stand out from the crowd. This next one, there’s no way you’re not gonna love it.”

“What is the next one?” Zena asked, looking for an opportunity to declare that she really wasn’t a car person after all, and that they might as well just head home. But with a wave of her finger and an exuberantly restrained hum, Renee refused to inform her until they pulled into the next dealership.

Mini Cooper.

“It takes a special kind of person to pull off driving in these cars,” Renee declared. “I sure wish I could. But you, I think, can.”

“I don’t know,” Zena muttered weakly, but Renee dragged her into the salesroom and in front of a heavily made-up and preternaturally perky blonde saleswoman.

“I’m Chelsea, how are you!” she erupted.

“This is Zena, and she’s going to buy one of your cars!” Renee popped. While the tone of her voice had a way to go to match Chelsea’s implausible squeak, it rose noticeably in just one sentence, and probably would overtake Chelsea before the test drive.

“Zena, I just love that name. You’re like an African goddess and a warrior princess all in one.”

“She is,” affirmed Renee. “My newest superstar.”

Zena scrunched up her shoulders and tried to make a sound that would make her seem excited. “Eep” is what emerged from her mouth.

Renee pointed at a red car with a white stripe down the middle. “That is the car that you are going to buy.”

“The Model 9822, it’s exceptional.”

“Very nice?” Zena whimpered.

Renee held up an informational brochure dangling from the driver-side window. “It’s turbocharged.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Zena admitted.

“It means more power and higher performance. You—

Renee’s sales instinct took over, and she cut Chelsea off. “You want higher performance. You deserve higher performance. We’re going to take it for a test drive.”

And so Renee steered the trio outside. Luckily she took the exit to the right; to the left was the lot for resales, but as this was her sale now, nothing Chelsea could have done could have turned her around. Chelsea did manage to nudge her away from the 9522s and to an exact replica of the showroom model. She even managed to warn Renee’s hand away from the driver’s door with a perfectly timed throat-clearing.

“Right,” Renee said. “It’s just lust.”

*****

This one, which will be completed tomorrow, was inspired quickly; a woman moaning quite loudly as she drove past the apartment building where I live. I mean, really loudly. (I live on the fourth floor.)

Just kidding—I was exiting the building when I heard her. Still, it was loud, and she was feeling something.

I combined it with some of my experiences with salespeople; I spent a lot of my life working for magazines that are 100% ad-supported, and as a result have had far too much more than my share of… let’s just call them, moments. It’s kind of fun putting three salespeople together, though.

I’m expecting this post to get a lot of hits*. After all, it will be tagged with “orgasm,” even though the true Mini Coopergasm doesn’t happen until part 2. So hey, tune in next time!

*Relative to other posts on this blog. I’m still famous only in the future, rather than the present.

The Forgiveness Gun, Part I

“I know you know that rage inside,” Garth insisted. “I know that no matter how positive you try to be when someone drops their plate of problems on you that you want nothing more than to rip their heads off and then rip their legs off and stick the legs through the neck hole.”

A flicker behind Lily’s eyes told Garth that he was right. But when she spoke, she did so insistently. “What good would wishing for violence do? It would consume me from within and do nothing to anyone who wronged me. The only weapon that we have against people like that is forgiveness.”

Garth genuinely didn’t mean to be rude, but he guffawed hysterically anyway.

“I mean it!” Lily demanded. “You can’t change what other people do, you can only change how you react to it.”

“I didn’t mean to…” Garth stammered. “I mean, we have a higher standard of respect here. It’s just that, you know, Conan the Barbarian doesn’t carry a plus-three sword of forgiveness. There’s no forgiveness rays, or forgiveness sabers, and Rambo doesn’t invade Vietnam armed with a forgivenessthrower.”

“Not even a light forgiveness shield,” piped in Johnathan, who had apparently been listening to the conversation even though the machete he was sharpening should have consumed all of his attention.

“I’m just saying, anger doesn’t have much of an application.”

“I’m sorry, Lily,” Garth said, finally stumbling upon the phrase recommended by etiquette. “I shouldn’t have laughed. I do have to dispute with you, though.”

Lily already recognized Garth’s social awkwardness. She silently accepted his apology, and invited him to continue.

“I suppose your theory is even right, as far as it goes. But it’s not complete. You have no children—“

“I don’t, but how did you know?”

Johnathan chortled. He had watched Garth fumble through this section before, but it never got old. It was a big part of why he enjoyed this particular task so much.

Garth, cursed at himself silently, but visibly. “I apologize once again. There is no easy way to identify people who belong in our group, so we do spend quite a bit of time observing potential candidates. I assure you, we will not use the information in any way, regardless of whether you join us or not.”

“And what exactly is your group?”

Johnathan clapped slowly and sarcastically at Garth.

“Lily, please,” Garth pleaded. “I—I will explain, but it will be easier if we go with this example first. Okay?”

Garth seemed so much lower than Lily. She was somehow looking down at him, despite him being at least a half a foot taller than her, and he was looking back up, and moreover he was looking back up with such earnestness that Lily had no choice but to accept.

*****

So, this is a bit from Receptacle, which is a bit down the line on my project list, but one that I’m excited by. Without giving too much away, the backstory is that Garth (and Johnathan, in his way) are trying to recruit Lily for… well, they’re trying to recruit her for something. I guess it’s not the most backstory I’ve ever given out, eh?

Superiority Tourism

Mrs. Dupont loves to travel.

She has seen the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower, and Red Square, and many of the rest of humanity’s most magnificent creations. She even has the photos.

The photos languish in albums on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in the back of her closet, behind her two formal gowns that had not been worn in a dozen years. Mrs. Dupont admits that this was not the ideal place for display; to anyone who asks, she sighs and says how she wishes they could be positioned more prominently, but she just can’t find the space in her tiny, tiny house.

In reality, the photos are hidden because they are irrelevant.

Mrs. Dupont does not travel to see the world. She travels to convince herself that she is better than it. Upon her return from Moscow, for example, she proudly displayed a number of shoddy Russian nesting dolls purchased from street vendors. When she had a visitor, she would exaggerate the difficulty of pulling the dolls apart and breathlessly declare, “I only bought them to show how awful the craftsmanship is over there.” At the Pyramids of Giza she purchased nothing; she used the fact that the northern part of the country was called “Lower Egypt” to demonstrate its people’s backwardness. But she adores her porcelain Eiffel Tower replica with one leg missing, or at least relating a well-practiced story of how it broke in transit despite being wrapped in three layers of paper and cushioned by four layers of cloth. (In fact, she had snapped the leg off herself, upon opening her suitcase and realizing that without some defect the piece wouldn’t have a proper backstory.)

There are business travelers, and eco-tourists, and family vacationers, and honeymooners, and even parents who travel to adopt a baby girl, but Mrs. Dupont is none of those. Mrs. Dupont is a Superiority Tourist, and proud of it.

*****

More from The Clean Hippie Murders. This passage, obviously, focuses on Mrs. Dupont, semi-estranged mother to Heather, who is the intern to Jonas, who is the mayor, protagonist, and if not chief investigator of the eponymous murders, at least an interested kibitzer. Does that make everything clear? That’s okay; it doesn’t need to be yet.

Like Rebecca in Exile Issues, the Duponts are a lot of fun for me to write. I haven’t really started on the book in earnest, and it has only the vaguest framework of plotline, but four of the nine stories that I’m planning to work in include at least one of them.

Free Liter With Haircut

Nathan knew that the word “free” is one of the most magnetic words humans have. He had always considered himself immune to the petty trappings of this dimension, however.

But now he was trapped in this dimension, just like a human, and it was getting harder for him to blend in. He was on an office just the other day, when a young child had told him how frightening his hair was. (Nathan’s understanding of English was solid but had some interesting gaps; at this point in his development, he still thought “office” meant any properly lengthy expanse of beige. The exchange with the young child actually happened on a sidewalk, but Nathan did not realize this.)

The barbershop that Nathan now stood in front of had no pole, but it did have a sign that said “Free Liter With Haircut.”

“I could use a liter,” Nathan thought.

Then, “No, that’s absurd. What would I use a liter for?”

Then, “I’m sure I could find something.”

And finally, “It’s what a human would do.”

With that, he opened the barbershop door, which obliged with a welcoming bell tinkling.

“I need a haircut,” Nathan announced to the room as a whole.

Cutters and cuttees alike were staring at him now. Nathan didn’t mind. It happened a lot, and he was used to it by now.

“Yikes,” grumbled one woman. She was dressed in black leather and black fishnets, with black lipstick and black nail polish and dyed black hair (with blonde roots, no doubt for irony’s sake.) She had been slumping petulantly in one of the chairs, a flask of something adult but alternative to her lips, but now she rose and approached Nathan like a woman approaching Mount Everest with a pair of bungee cords and a fourteen-hour time limit.

“Watchoo looking for?” she asked, clearly dubious that whatever it was belonged to the universe of the feasible.

“Shorter,” Nathan said cheerfully. “And less scary. Maybe a bob.”

The barber’s demeanor changed instantly; the despair lifted from her back and her smile lost its toothy sarcasm. “You a drag queen?” Drag queens were, to her mind, suitably countercultural and oppressed and therefore worthy of her best efforts.

“Nope. Not a queen at all.”

The barber considered having her attitude perform another U-turn, but decided against it. She simply wasn’t as young as she once was, and the emotional gymnastics she’d already performed would require her to ice her mind down with an entertainment news television program or face serious cramping in the morning.

“Why don’t I give you something a bit more interesting? I’m trained, I promise.”

“I’m sure you’re very good,” Nathan told her, as if she required reassuring.

Forty-five minutes later, Nathan’s head looked like a red Chihuahua with a furry scale model of one of the Great Pyramids on top.

He had to admit, on him it worked.

“And if you do decide to turn drag queen,” the barber instructed, “you’ll be able to tease that up into a beehive, no sweat.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nathan replied, in such a sincere tone that the barber believed him. He paid for his haircut, which was significantly more than he anticipated, but he didn’t mind. He had enough money for the short term, and no use for it in the long term.

Nevertheless, he waited at the cash register as the barber thanked him, turned away, and descended into the same seat she had been waiting in when he arrived.

“Something wrong?” she asked, once she’d achieved the proper state of gloom, and then lifted out of it enough to realize Nathan was hanging around.

“The sign says Free Liter With Haircut.”

“Oh, right.” Without standing, the barber reached behind her chair and retrieved an empty plastic bottle. She tossed it to Nathan.

“It’s my boss’s idea of a joke,” she said. “A stupid one. Most people don’t take it seriously.”

“I do,” Nathan said. The barber winced in anticipation of a major customer service battle, especially since she would be defending a side so clearly in the wrong. But it never came.

“I think it’s fantastic, and I’m going to keep it for all my days,” Nathan declared. He touched the point of his pyramid in salute, and walked out of the barbershop with newfound confidence.

*****

This was inspired by a new barbershop near my house. It’s got sort of a rock aesthetic, and it did at one point have a sign that said “Free Liter With Haircut.” (Or maybe quart or something, but some unit of volume.) The sign didn’t say what it was a liter of, and I had no cause to go in and ask.

Until very recently, I had my hair buzzed to the closest setting on my clippers. I’m growing it out right now for a part in a friend’s play, which is surprisingly traumatizing. You see, it’s growing, but unevenly. It varies day-by-day; sometimes it looks pretty awkward, and other days it looks truly atrocious. It’s gotten bad enough that I’ve purchased gel.

This may show up in Exile Issues. First, I need to determine how much I want to go the route of “alien looks at earth life with a completely naive perspective.” I think I’d rather try the “alien understands earth life more-or-less completely, but is sometimes and intentionally nonconformist” route, but we’ll see.

Character

Years ago, a travel writer visiting the town referred to a woman “whose every struggle showed on her deeply lined, weatherbeaten face. Her visage stands watch over Alaville, a stoic greeting and a symbol that you have entered a town from another time.”

The writer was a useful idiot, as most writers who visit Alaville are. Among his many mistakes (none of which did anything to make Alaville seem less than a rustic paradise, and therefore none of which needed correction) was his rather trite claim to be able to read the history of Janet Kelly’s struggles physniognomically.

Janet was blessed with reasonable wealth, and reasonable intelligence. She had never struggled in any real sense of the word. She was just ugly.

She made up for this with an ample supply of kindness, good humor, the aforementioned intelligence, and an impressively positive nature. She loved well, and was loved well, and possessed the ability to forgive or at least forget those souls who believe that appearance is the sole attribute upon which a person should be judged.

But you don’t have to be tactful and tell Janet that her face has “character.” Janet owns her physical ugliness, and celebrates it, and knows that she’s worthwhile.

*****

This little passage refers to the little town that is the setting of The Clean Hippie Murders. “Alaville” will definitely not be the name of the town in the final writing.

Nathan’s Farewell, part 2

He tried to get the car running again, but only managed to get the engine running once the blinding lights of the Chancellor’s guard were on him, and then it was far too late.

The guard who actually arrested Baru was a high-level lieutenant who had done the job before. He didn’t bother to speak, and carried out his duty without emotion.

The Chancellor took the situation personally enough for both of them, however. “I ought to have you killed,” he growled, heavily enunciating each word.

“But you won’t,” Baru said, even managing some swagger. He tried to combine defiance and righteousness and superior intelligence, without betraying the fear that he had miscalculated badly. In this he was reasonably successful.

The Chancellor glared for far longer than necessary. “No,” he finally said. “You will live down a world. You may have an aircar from my fleet to get there. You will not return.”

The Chancellor waved his hand carelessly, dismissing Baru from his presence. The lieutenant grabbed Baru by the shoulder and escorted him to a garage the size of several city blocks, containing dozens of gleaming land and air vehicles. Baru couldn’t help a twinge of lust; he had often fantasized about stealing one of the Chancellor’s ships and joyriding.

But as Baru followed the lieutenant, two things became clear. First, while most of the vehicles were outstanding, one could tell that the best and newest were up front; dents and scratches and broken mirrors started appearing as they made their way back. And second, Baru would be receiving the lemon of the lot.

The airship that he received was the size of a decent loft apartment. Even when new it would have maneuvered like an elementary school piano. And this ship was clearly not new; the indistinguishablity of the rust from the red paintjob showed that. Baru allowed himself a moment to consider the flips and spins and other acrobatics that he would not be doing in it.

“It’s perfect,” he announced with a sincerity he didn’t feel. He needn’t have bothered. The lieutenant, after indicating the proper craft, trusted the biolocks to make sure Baru got the right one and left silently.

Baru’kishnak entered what would be his new home. He didn’t notice the stale air, the unwelcoming red décor, or the fact that the outside door opened into a bathroom.

He fingered a tiny data storage disk, which he had been carrying since before his last run-in with the Chancellor. He didn’t make a habit of carrying computer equipment around, but he realized that he could be sent away at any moment, and that the disk held the key to his eventual return.

With a resigned sigh, he climbed a staircase to the flight office. He pressed a few seen and unseen buttons in a precise pattern, and nodded a temporary farewell to his home.

*****

Part 2 of the story that began yesterday. I’m not sure entirely what to think of it. It’s in third person from Nathan/Baru’s perspective, and I’m trying to hint at some details without coming out and saying them. That’s called preserving the dramatic tension. Unless it’s a miserable failure, in which case it’s called a mistake.

Nathan’s Farewell, part 1

The second siren concerned him.

The first siren, the blaring puzht puzht puzht of the Tivoli Police force, that was part of the chase. It invigorated him, reminded him that he was fully alive, rebelling against what he would proudly declaim as an unjust world to anyone who would listen.

The second siren never produced the noise of the first. It pulsed on a single tone, rising and falling in volume but never reaching ostentatious levels. It possessed a devastating authority that didn’t need to call attention to itself. It knew it just had to be and attention would be paid.

The second siren belonged to the Chancellor’s personal guard. The two forces were finally working together. Baru’kishnak allowed himself a glimmer of pride at his stature. While technically law enforcers, the Chancellor’s guard only truly served the Chancellor’s whims. They were above the law and knew it, and they never felt any particular apprehension about pointing out the fact when in mixed company.

For their part, the police resented the inferiority of status afforded them by virtue of their taking the noble path and obeying the rules. They cooperated with the Chancellor’s guard when directly ordered to, because the consequences of not doing so could be painfully fatal. To minimize their subservience, they tended to keep any information they had to themselves, on the reasonably sound theory that the guard couldn’t demand anything when they didn’t know what to demand.

So the fact that they were working together meant that Baru was important enough to attract the Chancellor’s personal attention. Baru knew that, of course—the Chancellor had warned him the last time they had spoken that his patience had been exhausted. Most of the Chancellor’s specific words were lost in rage that manifested itself in a high-volume combination of grunting and spitting, but he did conclude with a clear ultimatum to never cross his path again.

A path-crossing now seemed inevitable, but Baru figured he could at least give a nice showing on his way out. He urged his leapcar forward at maximum speed.

Baru’s car was awfully good; its maximum speed could top most police vehicles. But the Chancellor’s guard were elites, who drove sleek black frictionless machines whose sirens were getting closer.

One button press and Baru’s car leapt. Two buttons and a dial spin—each of which blurred into one another—later, and the car was bounding off the Tivoli City Museum, using the side of the building as a highly banked curve, with only minor damage to the façade between the twelfth and thirteenth floors from the impact.

Baru extended his lead in four more turns, only to lose some on the long straightaways that inevitably followed. On the fifth turn, however, he missed the dial, causing the car to careen into a hospital building side-first, where there was no shock absorption. The vehicle spun and flipped, landing on the ground right-side up and relatively undamaged, but stalled and facing the direction Baru definitely did not want to go.

*****

After a pretty bad October for writing, for two reasons that I won’t go into here, this is the first new bit of Exile Issues that I’ve written after the first draft was finished.

This is tentatively the new prologue to the book. The farewell in the title is Nathan’s farewell to his home world, rather than his farewell to earth. (Nathan is the name he affected to fit in on Earth; Baru’kishnak is his name on Tivoli, his home world.)

The Halloween Teabag

“Oh,” said Jonas, although the word ended in a different time zone than it began in.

Heather shrugged in response. She was the cause of this deflated outburst, or at least her attire was, but she didn’t feel that guilt was necessary. She had come in costume, as was customary for a Halloween party, and she’d obviously put in more effort than most, particularly the four slightly post-college men who each had purchased a costume that for licensing purposes had to be marketed as a “Eurasian Traveler.”

Heather had made her own costume. And while it wasn’t particularly skillfully made, it was recognizable, at least by the person it was directed at.

In honor of the protest movement that her mother had joined, Heather was dressed as a teabag.

She had added “I’m with stupid” in red nail polish where “Lipton” would normally go. Before the party, she waited on the couch for her mother to see. Mrs. Dupont involuntarily noticed her daughter and her rare pilgrimage outside her bedroom before remembering that she had nothing to say and dramatically ignoring her. Heather’s unusual dress demanded a second glance, which Mrs. Dupont did grant. She even shook her head at it and rushed into the kitchen. It was the closest thing to words that Heather and her mother had exchanged in four months.

To Jonas, Heather affected a phony Southern Belle accent and declared, “I know it’s not very good. My girl was just turned into a zombie.”

Jonas chuckled and thrust some Smarties into Heather’s hand, which she playfully threw back at him.

In fact, the simple explanation was that the costume was beyond Heather’s skill level. Her experience in sewing was limited to about two weeks in junior high home ec. She was aware that sewing machines existed, and had even used one once, but that didn’t mean that she was comfortable setting it up herself. (Let alone using her mother’s machine, or even rummaging through a closet to find it.) So Heather had bought some white gauzy fabric and attempted to stitch it together by hand.

Cutting was ludicrous; the fabric stretched and was far too large for her to hold and even though she simplified by dispensing with niceties like sleeves, the edges were still as jagged as a werewolf bite. She tried sewing the sheer rectangles together by hand. That attempt lasted half an hour and a total of five stitches.

The next day, Heather bought some strips of Velcro. She chose black, because they were marginally cheaper than the white, and using them made front and back pouches to hold the curled black construction paper that served as tea. Then more Velcro connected the two pouches into something that technically hung on Heather’s frame.

By the time she arrived at the party, the joints were already strained. In the act of tossing candy, she managed to catch the side of her bag on the doorknob, spilling the contents across the floor.

She shrugged and pulled off the entire costume, stuffing it into Jonas’s trick-or-treat bowl. Any kids who want candy, well, they can work for it.

*****

I’m calling this part of Clean Hippie Murders, since it features Heather Dupont, who is if not co-protagonist at least a high-level sidekick. Realistically, however, I doubt that teabagging (in a protest sense) will be relevant by the time it could conceivably be published. So just consider this non-canonical back story.

The inspiration is pretty directly from my life; I am going as a teabag this year (probably without “I’m with stupid,” but who knows) and construction is not going so well. But what can you do?

Rebecca and the Community Policing Survey

Rebecca smelled money.

This wouldn’t be such a bad place to have a one-night stand.

Rebecca heard a horn, followed by the gentle hum of a well-maintained car. “Excuse me, Miss? Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” she said, before she turned around to discover a police officer, a genial young fellow with a big, goofy, reasonably dim grin.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he called after her, “but you aren’t a prostitute, are you?”

“No.” Then Rebecca realized that she had the right to be offended. “How dare you! I am not a hooker.”

“Oh,” the officer groaned. “Are you sure?”

Rebecca answered with a glare.

“It’s just that, we’ve got this really great program, you know, working with the hookers to get them off the streets and into job training and substance abuse counseling and anger management and like fourteen other different things. But nobody’s whoring.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Rebecca said uncertainly. It seemed like the least she could do.

“So if you are a hooker, you can tell me,” the officer continued, enthusiasm unabated. “I won’t arrest you or nothing.”

“I’m not a hooker.”

The officer’s grin disappeared at last. “Oh,” he said. “Can I give you some career training anyway. Or,” and here he gesticulated upward with the excitement of a fresh idea “Say No to drugs. That’s a big N-O to drugs. You don’t need that junk.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rebecca grumbled.

“Really? It’s very important. We track the effectiveness of our community policing programs here in Northbrook very carefully. We won an award for our data gathering.”

Rebecca failed to reply. The officer took that as a cue to continue.

“I haven’t seen the award. They don’t let me touch things like that. I’m really only supposed to be ticketing cars at parking meters, but I bet no one would mind if I got some information. As a result of our conversation, would you say you’re more or less likely to become a prostitute? On a scale from one to five, with five being much less likely, one being much more likely, and three being about the same.”

“I’m not gonna do that…”

“It’s important,” the officer admonished. “I’m writing your information down on the back of my pad.”

“Fine. Three.”

“Very good. Oh.” The officer sucked on the end of his pen, oblivious to the blue ink dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “Only a three? May I ask why the number isn’t lower?”

Rebecca paused to consider how to frame her response to a query of this magnitude.

“I was never going to be a hooker,” she said, slowly. “So the fact that I’m not going to now would mean no change in the likelihood.”

“Okay, okay.” The officer struggled to note all of that information, as his pen started to extrude ink from the ball point only intermittently. “Next question, as a result of our conversation, would you say you’re more or less likely to take illegal drugs? Same scale of one to five.”

“Three,” Rebecca replied. “Same reason.”

“Good. As a result of our conversation, would you say you’re more or less likely to shoplift?”

“Four,” Rebecca said in a tone full of significance.

“Four, that’s good. And the reason?”

“Because I enjoy saying random numbers.”

“I get that a lot. Would you say you’re more or less likely to join a gang.”

Rebecca inhaled loudly and regretfully, through the corner of her mouth. “One,” she said with as much fake sadness as she could muster.

The officer was devastated. “Only one? Why is that?”

“Turkey giblets and cheese.”

The officer’s pen had reached hopelessness as a writing implement. He shook it one final time, trying to get whatever ink might have remained to pool at the bottom. Instead, it splattered through the top and across his face and uniform shirt.

“Oh, darn it,” he said. “Always happens. That’s why I keep a supply.” He wrote down Rebecca’s answer and continued the survey, asking such probing questions as whether or not Rebecca might burn down any buildings, or spray graffiti, or even become a police officer herself someday. To this last one, she replied “R.” The officer nodded knowingly; he got that particular response a lot.

“That’s it,” the officer said. “You’ve been very helpful. I’d give you a sticker that you could wear to show how you support the Northbrook Police Department, only I’m not allowed to carry them.”

“There’s something else you can do for me,” Rebecca said in her most manipulative voice.

“You are a prostitute! I knew it! I always hear stories about guys who talk to ladies of the night who claim that they aren’t but then offer a freebie in exchange for protection. Well, I have ethics, that can only be thwarted with something pretty special.”

“I’m still not a hooker. I’m a kidnapping victim.”

“Really,” the officer said. “We don’t get many of those up here. You seem well-dressed for it.”

“Thank you,” she said. She was annoyed and thrown off her game, which is how she came to use these foreign words. “But the thing is, I’ve just sort of escaped, and I’d like some help.”

The officer’s face brightened noticeably, in the sense of becoming happier, rather than smarter. “I can help. I’m required to. I’m a police officer.”

“Great,” Rebecca said, as she winced her way across the roughly paved road to the passenger seat. “I’ll show you where they are.”

********

This is a passage from Exile Issues. It’s late in the book, and I remembered being very pleased with it; I came across it again today in editing and realized that I never put it up here, so I figured I should.

This comes late in the book; Rebecca has been kidnapped by the three-eyed alien, and has now escaped him. She was kidnapped at the conclusion of a date for which she had dressed fairly sluttily (as she does), which is why she’s so easily mistakable for a prostitute.

Most of what I’ve posted from Exile Issues has involved Rebecca, which implies that she’s a bigger character than she really is. She really only appears in interludes throughout most of the book, and only joins the main timeline at the end. She is more integral than I originally intended, which I guess is what happens when a character hits the right note so easily.