Writing Group

Stories from a group of New York City writers who get together once in a while to free write with visual prompts and wine. 

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor by Greg Wands

The boy was too captivated by the glow of the trinket to notice the crease in the old man’s brow. Had he been able to temper his awe, to shut down the sheer wonderment and heart-thumping thrill of the spectacle long enough to switch his gaze to his elder, he might have been startled by the sullen concern in the man’s map of a face. If he’d abandoned the easy pull of the ornament, he might have been able to read the eyes of his aged companion, might have found himself drawn to the enigmatic expression—equal parts regret, longing, wisdom and recognition. If he’d found his way to the old man’s eyes—those weathered windows sunk into the folds of time—he might have sensed a reflective quality; the glimmer of nostalgia peeking out between the cracks and crevices of hard-won experience—the very kind that can’t help but suffocate the magic of discovery even as it grasps wildly for the innocence at its root. But the boy did no such thing—for why would he? It would never occur to him to follow such a folly of pursuit; not with this unqualified miracle right here, in this moment, revealing its endless possibilities to him, and him alone.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

A Terrible Hangover by Sarah Stodola

At the time, $900 seemed like an unfathomable amount of money. That much money seemed liked happiness itself, or at least like insurance against unhappiness. $900 was how much money I had per month, after taxes. I would take joy in allocating it. $475 for rent. I was still on my parents’ health plan, so nothing there. $150 for groceries. Literally, I would take $150 out from the ATM and go to the supermarket, and buy everything for the month. And then my part of the utilities was like $50. Everything I’ve mentioned totals $675. That left me $225 per month to do whatever the hell I wanted with.

This felt indulgent, extravagant. This felt like expendable income. You should know that at my favorite bar in my town at the time, a vodka tonic cost $2.50.

I got paid twice per month from my job as a work-study editorial aide to the kids in the editing lab learning how to use Avid editing equipment. The direct deposit usually dropped on the 5th and the 20th of every month.

On September 3rd, 2002, I woke up with a terrible hangover and $17 left in my bank account. Side note: I truly believed this to be a terrible hangover because I was 22. With this terrible hangover, I got up at 8am after having gone to bed four hour earlier; I showed up on time to my shift in the lab, and competently assisted three students with their first-ever editing projects. I assumed that I would spend the 3rd trudging through work and then watching whatever was on television, and I would spend the 4th doing laundry, which cost $7 total, because it had been literally a month and a half, and then on the 5th I would wake up with a fresh $450 in my account.

At approximately 4:27pm on the 3 rd , this assumption was proven incorrect. That is the precise moment that Billy knocked on my front door. I know because I saved the email I was dutifully writing to my mom at that moment, telling her, incidentally, about how long it had been since I’d heard from Billy. I saved my draft and got up to answer the door.

Billy was holding an ice pack to the right side of his mouth.

What happened, I asked him?

Do you have any beer? 

He answered, shoving past me and into my house.

Ugh, Billy.

He got a can of beer out of my fridge, took the ice pack away from his face, replaced it with the beer, then took the beer away, cracked it open, and took a huge swig. Now I could see the weird purple welt he was cultivating.

He saw me seeing. This is nothing like you think it is, he said.

Okay, then what.

He rolled his eyes and then just sort of swooned onto my couch. I need to borrow $200, he said.

I don’t have $200, I said. I have $17, and I need seven of that for laundry tomorrow.

Okay so you have $10. If I don’t find $190 more by tomorrow night I won’t be able collect the $400 for my gig two days from now.

Ugh, can we go get a drink and talk about this?

We did, and this is how Billy and I were left with zero dollars and a need to get from St. Louis to Chicago within five hours, because his rich aunt lived in Chicago and would be willing to front us the money, but only if we came tonight so that she could take us to her favorite breakfast spot in the morning. Front him the money. I wasn’t clear why I was involved, except that it was clear I was involved now.

The welt on Billy’s face was almost incidental.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

A Letter in Quarantine  by Erum Naqvi

Dr. Templeton Esq.

If you’ll permit the presumption, may I say, Reginald --

I hope this little scribble finds you well, though I dare say in these times one daren’t ask the question. Though, upon reflection, such a greeting might, in fact, be apt for the times, as it were.  As I sit upon my stool contemplating the bleak days ahead, I am but warmed a little to think upon my dear friend, who sits but a stone’s throw away—and yet it were as if an ocean lay between us. I do hope you’ll permit me the indulgence, in such circumstances, of a little musing.

I should admit, unfashionable as it is in an inquiry of this sort, that I find myself dwelling upon that dear little conundrum we discussed but only last Thursday, about the delicate matter of your baker. It was such a terrible blow that this unfortunate circumstance befell both of our households before I could return him in haste to your estate. I have to admit I even furnished him with a darling bottle of brandy as a gesture of gratitude but the poor chap drank it at once upon hearing that he was stuck in our kitchens until this awful little epidemic runs its infuriating little course.

One can hardly blame him, for even in the best of circumstances, our dear cook hasn’t been inclined to share her oven. Why, the kitchens are in an uproar. The butler is beside himself because the entire lower staff have taken to furnishing themselves with white gloves—only as a precaution, of course—and not that I blame him, but in their current state I do rather fear he lives in perpetual terror of being mistaken for a scullery maid. 

But even in such dire circumstances I must assure you, dear friend, not to let a moment’s doubt cross that furrowed little brow of yours, for upon my word I shall send him back to you so safe and sound, and with such fortitude that the little devil will bake your likeness in every loaf of bread you eat next year. Indeed, I shall not sleep but a wink until I am assured the spirit of your memory has moved his soul, and your illustrious essence shall be immortalized in his dough forever. And, dear chap, should your spirit wane in his absence, I hope you shall not think it impertinent for me to assure you that good bakers always make plenty of dough.

Now, if you’ll indulge me the indelicacy of dwelling on private matters, I do hope your spirits, no doubt woefully impoverished by the loss of your baker in such trying times, are, at the very least, not so sunken that your liquor cabinet is drunk(en). You’ll have to forgive me, dear chap, for the appalling witlessness of my humor, I am quite beside myself in these perilous days without the daily fascinations of life to invigorate my mind. 

As fate would have it, I am pleased to inform you that the liquor cabinet on my estate remains moderately stocked on bourbon (a new-fangled little tincture from the Americas that has a distinct flavor of smoked molasses), rum (don't worry old friend, I do know it's a tad on the wrong side of the river, if you know what I mean, but I am so terribly fond of my tropical jaunts that it lifts my spirits in the drizzle of midwinter), and lord help us, if we need it.... brandy.

Otherwise it would appear as if we are faring as well as can be expected in domestic matters, though lemons appear to be short supply and lord knows how we’ll dine on salmon without it.

Should you have the slightest inclination, I would be so terribly amused if you were disposed to writing a little scribble back to your old chum. One longs, in such days, for even the mildest stirrings of interest from the delight of a new letter. I dare say it’s a poor substitute for the larks to which we are accustomed, but I have no doubt that your wit will sparkle as ever. Even without that dear little magician of a baker. Why only yesterday he baked the entire plot of Great Expectations into a fruit cake. I should have enjoyed it terribly much if Miss Havisham (who, on account of her bitterness, was carved out of almonds) hadn’t given me such terrible indigestion.

I remain as ever, your faithful servant, in duty as I am in brotherhood,

Sincerely and faithfully yours,

Horatio Basildon Scrimpshire-Naqvi Of the Bombay Scrimpshire-Naqvis who did so bravely assume Their rightful place in Britain following the dark days of colonialism

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Getting the right answers... by Matthew Gilbert

“Matthew m’boy, come in. I was just telling Carmichael here about my legendary modesty.”

I took in the room as quickly as such a thing may be humanly accomplished. Pure theatre—so pure it was predictable. A library in a well-preserved Scottish castle inhabited by a man of stupefying pretension looks precisely as you would expect. An expanse of brooding chestnut shelves teemed with innumerable leather bindings, ordered by some long-lost science of classification. I imagined that upon those ornate planks, every subject in every book was written and pressed for the sole purpose that it may slumber beyond any notice—history indifferent to its future.

The various furnishings arranged through the vast spaces of the room looked expensively ugly. Too small or too large. Divided by carpets and animal pelts. Power and riches from across the globe, brought to heel upon resplendent marble. There was more. But I had only that second to take it all in.

“Hello, Mr. Berkeley,” I said. Berkeley gestured to a chair, and I sat upon its imperious cushion, immediately regretting my inadvertent daintiness.

The portly Carmichael and my host, the gaunt Berkeley, looked on with faint disgust.

“Berkerely,” said Carmichael, “be a pony and have your man replenish me.”

Carmichael was pointing at me. Fuck him. I wasn’t Berkeley’s man.

“I believe Mr. Gilbert has not traversed 3000 miles and a great many echelons of society to clip clop your potions for you.”

“He needn’t clip nor clop. Just retrieve and pour. Gilbert is it? The brandy, lad. Make me merry.” He shook his glass at me, perhaps thinking that it would exert some sort of desirable effect upon a middle-class American. I pointed out that Gilbert was indeed my name, Dr. Matthew Gilbert. It was the first time I had ever introduced myself this way. 

“The brandy, good doctor. Medicine before wellness, wellness before business.”

In a preposterously beautiful crystal decanter lay a portion of what appeared to my eyes as ambrosial amber liquid. I could smell it by sight alone. I snatched the glass, poured, and set it on a malachite end table just out of Carmichael’s reach.

“Brute,” said Carmichael.

“Mr. Berkeley,” I said, “I apologize, but I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“Surely not.”

I ignored the remark, being in a rush. I set down the bag I’d been carrying. Its shoulder strap had all but rubbed the skin away from my shoulder, and its contents clunked severely on the stone floor.

“Speak with me awhile, Mr. Gilbert,” said Carmichael. To my amazement, he then referred to himself in the third person. “Carmichael, as you are not murdered, you may go.” Berkeley stood up, made for the door, and shoulder checked me on the way out. I was going to call him a dickhole, but the peculiar turn of events was freshly sinking in. Carmichael was not Carmichael. 

“You’re Berkeley,” I said. 

The portly man nodded.

“Well?” I asked. I didn’t want to say more than I had to. And I didn’t know what else to say. 

“Well what?”

“Shall we conclude our business?” I answered. 

Berkeley sat back in his 18th Century Louis and gazed up at the frescoes sprawling the vaulted ceiling. A curious scene caught my eye, and I believe Berkeley was looking at it as well. A black figure, lean, with bat wings and a mosquito-shaped face like a gas mask was receiving sackfuls of some sort of offering from stooping men in brown robes. Behind them, angels wept, appearing to climb into saucer-shaped clouds.

“Grotto or grotesque style,” said Berkeley. “I adore it, and I adore little.”

“Mr. Berkeley, I—”

“—Mr. Gilbert, I implore you not to be in a rush. Surely you knew that I would need to detain you here.”

“I didn’t,” I said in earnest.

“How is it that you didn’t know? I sense you have no idea what business lies ahead for us. You’re beginning to strike me as a man who knows only what he sees and hears and has read, yes?”

“Then perhaps you could provide some answers,” I said. My courage was draining away while vertigo whirled around my skull. 

“Ah,” said Berkeley. “Getting the right answers is only possible when you ask the right questions.”

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Aixelsyd by Sarah Stodola

The first time Elton did mushrooms, he watched in horror as his favorite guitar melted all over the table his parents kept in the garage but took out to the yard for occasions like graduations, welcome homes, as well as generic cookouts and picnics. He watched, mesmerized, wondering if because it was an electric guitar it might short circuit and catch fire and burn the whole house down. He wasn’t clear on how he’d even gotten into the garage, but now that he was, he climbed on top of his mom’s Subaru and lay down flat on the roof. A little bit of the guitar’s red shellac dripped onto the concrete floor of the garage, where it became blood, obviously. But whose? 

Later, the symbolism of this would be stupidly clear. His guitar playing and his band had shit all over everything his parents had tried to do for him, was the way his dad had put it, while his mom stood next to him, arms folded across her chest, looking like she agreed with her husband but wished she didn’t. That the guitar had at least partially turned into blood meant that it was literally a part of him. His own blood. Elton was 19 years old, we’ll give him a pass for this kind of sentiment.

The second time he did mushrooms, Elton looked down to see, once again in horror, that his left hand was now attached to his right arm, and vice versa. The third time, he looked in the mirror and could only see a young Eric Clapton looking back him. Rather, this man looking back at him seemed like a young Eric Clapton. He’d never seen young Eric Clapton, but this guy in the mirror looked exactly like him. Young Eric Clapton held a cool cigarette between his fingers, he shifted his slim weight in his tailored, disheveled suit, and with all the dispassion of a future rock legend, he said to Elton from inside the mirror, You’re playing the wrong generation’s game, Elton.

After that, he didn’t do mushrooms anymore.

But he thought a lot about what game he was playing, and why it belonged to another time, and how he might play one instead that would matter more to the present day. He started writing a song called Them, and a line in it went, I’m a boy, but we’re all gender neutral. He played it for his bandmates and they said it was gay but that they’d play it as long as they could make it more metal. As soon as they started playing it in practice though, he lost interest in whatever message he’d been pushing. 

And then one night Young Eric Clapton came to him in his sleep and said, Elton, come on, my grandpa was more modern than you are.

So he wrote a song about dyslexia, because it seemed possibly related to the trip where his hands got attached to the wrong arms and also he was pretty sure that in Young Eric Clapton’s grandpa’s day dyslexia wasn’t a thing. And now every night he waited for Young Eric Clapton to return to his dreams again and let him know he’d gotten it right. Young Eric Clapton stayed away for the better part of a month though and Elton started to worry that maybe You Eric Clapton was himself dyslexic, and offended by the title of the song, which was Aixelsyd. Or, dyslexia spelled backward. Also, another line in the song went, I just can’t read you, and Elton came to it all on his own that if he couldn’t do better than this, he should probably actually melt his guitar. He tossed out the song without even presenting to his bandmates.

One day soon after that, Elton put his coat on and then the hat his mom had knit him and then he went to put his gloves on but he put them on the wrong hands. He looked down at one hand and then the other. He looked at them palm up and then palm down, and then he crossed them over each other and looked at them that way. What he realized then was that he was a shit guitarist. Why had he settled for guitar when he could have been a lead singer, a part in a band that gets all the glory and doesn’t even require hands?

The question now was, could he sing. He thought about this constantly, during his Accounting 101 class and during the bus ride into campus and also on the bus ride home from campus. He thought about it every minute, without ever taking the obvious step, which would be to belt out a few notes. He still went to band practice and took out his guitar and played his parts while Richie sang lead…

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Light by Greg Wands

It was the light through the window that caught her attention. She’d been lying on the bed, absently tapping one stacked heel against the other, and contemplating her life—where it had been, where it was going, whatever curious limbo it seemed to be in at the moment. The late-afternoon sun had been responsible, she realized. The steady, gradual dip behind the tree line, and the ensuing play of shadow across the window frame, then the carpet, and finally the bedspread, had created a hypnotic pull, lulling her into the crevices of her memory. She’d been pulled under by the insistent tug of the past, and nudged ahead to the current state of her circumstances, in this hotel room, on the other side of the world, the latest in the tug-of-war that seemed to dictate the shape and contour of her life over the last few months.

She supposed she’d known all along. That was the rub with hindsight, wasn’t it? The clarity that now existed, which you couldn’t believe hadn’t been announcing itself loudly all along. It was the small moments and movements—the way he’d flinch just a bit at her touch, his eyes flitting about, unable to settle on anything in particular in his effort to avert her gaze. The engagement had seemed at the time to be a mere formality, a foregone conclusion. It was always understood that she’d marry well, and to a guy like him. He looked good on paper, he brought the right connections to the table, the right kind of charm for the occasion. She thought back now to the nagging feeling she hadn’t been able to articulate—the feeling of being alone together with him. As the clock wound down in the direction of their wedding day, she’d noticed his unease in subtle yet more pronounced ways; the eye strayed a second longer, the smile held an extra sliver of menacing emptiness. His words diverged from his body language in expanding degrees.

It was the night before the ceremony when she’d finally allowed herself to realize what she’d known all along—he’d never be the one to call it what it was…or wasn’t. He’d let himself be pulled along by the tide of their relationship, never voicing his discontentment but always flashing it in stares and sighs. She’d have to be the one to take responsibility, to call it what it was. She’d have to be the bad guy in all of this, because he never would. The realization left her split between resentment and relief; the latter won out, as she knew that resigning her fate to the kind of person who’d let life happen to them for the sake of appearances was not something she could stomach. She’d logged plenty of miles on that type of road already.

Not that a sprinkle of resentment didn’t have its place. It allowed her to be where she was now—in a part of the world where they’d planned on celebrating their new life together, yet in a different hotel, and in a headspace a universe away.

It was the slow draw of the light through her window that had pulled her head toward the recent past, but it was the sudden flinch of shadow that sprung her back to the present. She glanced in the direction of the setting sun. The movement could have been anything—a tree swaying in the breeze; a body cutting through the path below her window; something entirely unknown. She rose from the bed, smoothed her dress and exited the room, in search of whatever she might find outside of those walls.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Tehran Afternoon by Erum Naqvi

When I think of my grandmother’s house it’s always the light I remember first. The windows face the back, looking into an alley. The light streams in on those long afternoon stretches between lunch and dinner when everything is quiet. The light is mottled by the grey white net curtains embroidered with tiny grey flowers. Outside, on the stone flagged patio, surrounded by high walls and wilted trees that hang into an empty, dilapidated swimming pool, the light is harsh and unforgiving, and you have to squint your eyes, and try not to scrape your knees on the marble stairs leading out to the patio as you scramble around. But inside, it has an almost cooling, underwater feel.

I used to sit under the dining room table in those slow passing hours when the grown ups slept away the hot summer days, drawing with a biro on a scrap of paper from the pad by the telephone that grown ups scribbled incoherently on. Sometimes I’d have to draw around the numbers written in Arabic. They looked more like shapes than numbers, and I would imagine them coming to life and walking around the page. The number four looked like an old man in a cloak who was bending over and telling someone something they didn’t want to hear. Five was robust, and full of life. Kind of like grown up ladies’ boobs. Two and three were like clusters of school children giggling and having fun. They were my favorite. Numbers at school in England were nowhere near as fun. All those times tables, so much calculating.

London felt like clammy school uniforms, cartoons in the afternoon, knees battered up by falls on asphalt, and that awful stinging stuff that smelled like the dentist that teachers would put on your scrapes when you fell.

It felt like trying, all the time.

Trying to be a bit more, well… English, I suppose. But there were so many things that were different. It all smelled different. My mum thought everything was dirty so she didn’t let me go to people’s houses. Iran was dirty too, but in a sort of dusty, dry, windy way, not a sticky, clammy way. It it didn’t seem to bother her as much there. Except for having to wash my face in the morning, I was pretty much in the clear.

I never thought about England when I was in Iran. I was just there. Sometimes I would play tapes of old fairy tales on the cassette player that nobody used on account of the radio in the kitchen. I didn’t understand them all, because they were in Farsi, but the voices were good, even if the wolf was scary. There was always a wolf, even in Iran, where we didn’t have princesses in our fairy tales, but practical cockroaches and such. My grandpa, who never slept much, would patter around quietly tending to his suit jacket or some other task. Grandma, who did sleep a lot, would bustle about the kitchen in the mornings and the evenings. Mostly they just left me alone. My mum would sit for hours on the chair by the telephone, chatting away and wrapping the cord around her fingers and gaily swinging the heel of her slipper that hung from her foot. In London she fussed a lot more. Looked around a lot, drew the net curtains, flipped light switches on and off, told me off about my hair, or my dirty hands, or my unfinished plate. She was always looking at me.  

At grandmother’s house I could just melt into the atmosphere and disappear into the stream of the day. Under the table, in the driveway with the old dilapidated motorcars, running endlessly up and down the marble stairs between grandma’s apartment and the one upstairs. Once, even, and without any grownups, down the road and across the highway to the shop that sold little cartons of orange juice. No car, no rain, no seatbelt buckles, no fuss. It felt easy.

I wonder now if it’s because she was at her mum’s house, and not the one who had to be in charge. Grandmother didn’t mind what I did so much at all. Sometimes she’d poke me in the back to make me sit up straight but always with her delighted chuckle, so it didn’t seem so serious. She laughed like someone had told her a dirty joke, no matter what the occasion. And I loved it. It felt cool and refreshing to the ear.

Easy.

Like the light that quietly streams in through her net curtains, unfazed by who is languishing in it.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Bird Legs by Sarah Stodola

How hard would you have to squeeze a small bird’s legs to break them? Not very hard, he thinks, as he lets up on the pressure of this particular bird’s legs, which he didn’t mean to catch, but did in an impulsive second before his hand bothered to communicate with him what it was up to. He is pleased with himself, that he watched the bird struggle to fly from his grasp, and then, after an experimental squeeze, let the bird do just that. There is decency in him, now proven.

The bird’s legs had felt like twigs, if twigs were warm and rubbery.

The bird had lifted him out of his boredom. But now, as it settles on a branch of a nearby tree, he becomes bored again, only now he is aware of not only just how bored he is, but how distant relief lies in the future. He will be exactly this bored until dusk, and the sun hasn’t even reached its peak in the sky yet, although it’s close. He lays his head on the edge of the window, but the metal has grown hot in the early afternoon heat. How long would he have to leave his cheek touching this metal until it would burn. Not very long, he thinks, as slowly sits back up. Again he is pleased with himself, that he felt the early sting of a burn and, after an experimental increase in pressure, removed himself from the prospect of pain. There is self-preservation in him, now proven.

Which is the same as self-respect. Or self-regard. A regard for the self. The thought fills him with a sense of calm. 

He looks at his watch at the same time he wonders if it is a good idea to have worn a watch in this situation. They wouldn’t let him bring his phone. Which he understands. Because of GPS tracking. Anyway, it’s three minutes since last time he looked at his watch, just before the bird landed on the edge of the window. Speaking of, the bird takes flight and is soon beyond his field of vision, into the sun.

He remembers the jug of water behind him, grabs it, unscrews the cap and takes a swig. It is still vaguely cooler than the air. He takes another sip. He touches it to his forehead.

A moment later, he rests his head against the wall and closes his eyes and she springs into his mind and he remembers that he doesn’t want to think about her anymore, so he opens his eyes, which is when he sees the car off in the distance spewing up dust as it approaches him, slowly, it seems, and then quickly as it gets closer. It’s an electric car, which seems like the height of folly considering their current location. 

His sits up but continues to look bored. When the electric car reaches his immediate vicinity, he makes out two men, both of whom could have just emerged from a Midwestern state school frat party. The one in the passenger seat gets out of the car and walks toward him.

“Can I help you?” he says to the could-be frat boy.

“We’re here for the pick up,” the kid says.

“I’m just a guard for this property,” he says. “What exactly are you looking to pick up?”

The kid obviously doesn’t know what to say next, if he’s being tested or if this really is a mix-up. 

“Are you Benny?” The kid asks.

“I’m not,” Benny says.

The kid just stands there, wishing he knew what to do next. Benny raises his eyebrows like, anything else? And the kid walks back to the car, but to the driver’s side, and leans down to convene with the other kid. Benny’s starting to feel bad for messing with them—the decency, there it is again. When the kid stands up and looks at him, he beckons him back over with a little gesture of his hand. The kid looks at the other kid, who nods, so the first kid walks back over.

“Here you go,” Benny says, and lifts a box about the size of shoebox, but not a shoebox, over the side of the window. The kid takes the box. He lingers. He wants to break the ice with Benny now that they’re all on the same page. “You’ve gotta go now,” Benny tells him, and the kid does. 

Benny has three jobs today, and has finished his first one. He looks at his watch. It is 17 minutes since he last looked at it. 

The electric car gets back into motion, and to pass the time he watches it until it disappears over the horizon. Even after the car is no longer visible, he watches until the dust it churned up has finally settled. In the new stillness, he regrets having let the bird go. He wants to look at his watch again but knows it is too soon.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Adventurine by Tyler C. Gore

It was four o’clock in the morning, and I was walking through the creepy underpass on Third Avenue that always seems like it should be full of prostitutes, or at least junkies, but disappointingly never contains either, and I was drunk, but if I am honest, I was not very drunk. I was sober enough to know that my wife was going to be either angry or scared, and possibly both, when I finally got home, and I was also sober enough to know that the impulsive idea flitting through my head as I entered the underpass was not a very smart one.  I was mildly drunk — not so drunk that I had forgotten I had three cans of recently purchased Krylon spray paint in my messenger bag, and I was standing in close proximity to an ungraffitied wall and there was no one around, not even junkies or prostitutes — but drunk enough to say, fuck it, why not.

I took out the can of Canary Yellow spray paint, shook it vigorously, and positioned myself at the far end of the underpass, and spray painted a giant D. I stood back, looked at it, looked at the length of the wall, looked at the anonymous third avenue traffic passing intermittently through the tunnel, and I once again thought fuck it, and I spray painted an R.  And I felt pleased with myself, and knew that I if I chickened out and didn’t finish, it would somehow be something I’d turn into an unhappy metaphor for middle age, or marriage, or my mediocre career.  So I got to work.

It actually took a lot longer than I’d anticipated. It was cold, and the nozzle kept clogging, and the letters were big, and there were a lot of letters, but I finished the whole thing. I walked across the avenue to the other side to look at it.  The letters were all crooked and different sizes and badly spaced, but it was perfectly legible.

           DRINK DELICIOUS ADVENTURINE             YOU BORING MOTHERFUCKERS!

I could not stop looking at it. It was almost quarter to five, and my overcoat and gloves were covered in Canary Yellow, and I was standing right across the avenue with the dripping can in my hand, but God, I suddenly felt that I had finally done something right, that I’d somehow kicked open a door that had been stuck shut for years, and I was not going to close it again.

//

So do we start with my friend Paul’s rock tumbler, or with the student who had been in my 200 level Painting Techniques class two years ago, who I’d been close friends with until last semester, which was also my last semester? Or do we start with my mom’s broken hip right before Christmas?

Let’s start with the summer of 1978, when I was 10 and we lived in the old house in Teaneck, New Jersey and my Dad decided he wanted me to meet his mother, my grandmother, who was 92, and lived in Arcadia, Louisiana, a place he had not been since he was sixteen and ran away from home.

If you are from Arcadia, Louisiana, and you are over the age of forty, you might know something that I discovered when I was ten and never forgot. There was a popular local soft drink that was sold in a bright yellow can that contained a beverage — my father told me — was essentially composed of root beer flavored with prune juice, and this soft drink was called ADVENTURINE.  

My father has been dead for over twenty-five years, but I think he would be surprised to find out that Adventurine is probably the only thing I’m grateful to him for.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

The Sign Above the Shop by Erum Naqvi

The sign above the door swayed lightly in the breeze, creaking a little. I’m sure it made that  slight yet ominous squeaking sound you hear in movies, but we couldn’t hear it, of course, on account of the 235 bus trundling by on Oxford Street just behind us. It would have fit the scene, for sure — if you could forget about the man in a suit who looked irritated and the family in visors who were blocking his way to take pictures.

If I just close my eyes and imagine hard enough, I thought, this could totally be Diagon Alley. We were on St. Christopher’s Place, a little alleyway wedged between Marble Arch and Bond Street (on the Central line, that’s the train we take to get into the city), just short of Selfridges but not quite at Primark. It’s one of my favorite streets in London. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s where J. K. Rowling got the idea for Diagon Alley. She must have. I mean, there are lots of little alleyways tucked into side streets in London, but most of them are piled with rubbish, and usually, what looks like somebody’s dubious vomit from the night before. And there’s also usually a mean looking guy smoking a cigarette out the back door of the restaurant he works in. To be fair, he probably looks mean because of the smell. I would too, if I had to needle out a smoke break between a pile of rubbish and a pile of vomit and a pile of dishes.

But St. Christopher’s Place — it’s different. You could walk up and down Oxford Street every day of your life and you would never notice it. But once you did, it would be impossible to forget. It winds round the back of Selfridges, and has these wrought iron arches that line its narrow breadth, hung with decorations like lanterns, or stars. Nowhere else looks like that in real life (except for squats and stuff that have been decorated for parties). And it’s dotted with these tiny shops with cool things like swinging signs that I’m definitely — on reflection — sure make those ominous squeaking sounds if you could hear them. The sign didn’t even have a name on it. Just an unassuming picture of a little white rock dotted with black specks.

“That’s a Dalmatian Jasper,” said Matt, with a twinkle in his eye. He’s recently gotten into rock tumbling on account of getting two rock tumblers from two different people on Christmas day and I mean, what are the odds of that? You’d kind of have to start rock tumbling if that happened to you. Else you’d be worried that fate would punish you and you’d somehow wind up on the wrong timeline and end up destitute, or in prison or something, all because you didn’t tumble some rocks. He likes to see the magic in places too, tucked away in little corners of real life, waiting to be noticed. My friend Li noticed us both staring up at the sign and looked annoyed. “Come on” she said, in the flat but firm tone she reserves only for her child, her husband, and me. “We’re late for our reservation” she offered up apologetically, catching her tone.

If it was anybody else I would have scoffed, and retorted that nobody makes reservations for dinner at 6:30, especially when it’s just the three of you and you don’t have any particular plans anyway. But those things matter to Li. I suppose they give her a sort of feeling of meaning in the way ambiguous creaking signs in back alleyways that wind around Selfridges do for me — and for Matt too, I suppose.

I didn’t want to move, though. I felt I’d caught on to the wisp of a breeze that cast the little alleyway in a different light. And if I averted my gaze for a just a second I’d break the spell and sink back into the blank surface veneer of the street, with its tourists in visors and number 235 buses, and irritated business people trying to push past slow couples with shopping bags, all trying to get into Bond Street tube station before rush hour.

“If you must know” said Li, sort of patiently and impatiently at the same time “It’s one of those dumb hipster places that sells vitamins in glass vials and green juice in Chanel bottles so they can charge five times as much.” I nodded, still looking at the sign, as Matt chuckled. “Okay” I said, reluctantly dragging my eyes away, and letting the softly creaking sign dissipate into the clamor of the bustling city. “Let’s go.”

I dawdled slowly behind Li, who was rushing ahead and looking at her watch, and Matt, who was walking in a sort of unperturbed way with his hands in his pockets. Just as we were about to turn off St. Christopher’s Place, he turned and flipped me something from his pocket. I missed it, of course, because I have no depth perception, but I picked it up swiftly off the street.

Peering at the little rock in my palm, I couldn’t help but chuckle. It was a Dalmatian Jasper. I grinned at Matt, as the corners of his mouth twitched ever so slightly upward.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Hot Pink Stilts by Sarah Stodola

It was the red one, he said.

What red one?

The one, like, most of the way in the back of the auditorium.

That wasn’t red. It was definitely pink. Like the kind of pink that lives  for being pink. What are you color blind? Sheila don’t listen to him,

We’d been trying to tell Sheila how the whole thing started. It was definitely pink. Actually though the “it” in this case was a man on stilts, dressed head to toe—err, head to bottom of stilt—in a shimmery hot pink material that may have had the suggestion of orange in it, but saying so would complicate the conversation even further. And where he wasn’t dressed in shimmery hot pink, his visible skin was painted with it. His head was covered in a shimmery hot pink pageboy wig. His nails were painted in it.

The man on stilts had been dancing along with everyone else in the place, which was interesting I thought, because usually men on stilts are performing, but he wasn’t, He was just a man hanging out on stilts.

Until he wasn’t. Usually these kinds of parties are all love and good auras and hugs, but of course one or two ramped up assholes inevitably make their way in. And it happened that one of them gave a good shove to another one, over who knows what, spilled beer maybe, and the shovee stumbled backward and there was a slow motion moment of watching to see if he would regain his balance before he made contact with the hot pink man on stilts.

He didn’t.

When a man on stilts tumbles over in a crowd, there is collateral damage. By the time those three or four second of falling were over, the hot pink man formerly on stilts lay in the center of a moderately size pile of humans. The good thing, probably, is that these other humans had softened fall. None of them seemed hurt, either. They did seem existentially assaulted, but they slowly brushed themselves off and made their ways back to the standing position.

The stilted man continued to lie there, not in an injured sort of way, more like this was just the next phase of the evening for him, from a new vantage point. His head continued to bob to the music.

We happened to be nearby when it all happened, so I knelt next to him and asked him if he was okay. He didn’t say anything, but he did lift his hand, which was closed in a fist. At first, the fist was situated palm down. Slowly, he  rotated it until it faced palm up. Then he slowly opened his hand. I looked into his palm, and it was the strangest thing, to see a deep red stone, polished smooth, sitting there on his hot pink life line.

He made a little gesture, like he wanted me to take the rock. And so I did. It felt right that he, a 100 percent hot pink man, not be holding onto a deep red rock.

I slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans and more or less forgot about it. The hot pink man on stilts was probably one of those weirdos, who come to parties like this one in droves by the way, who believe in the magical healing powers of rocks. I’m not one of those people, and kept the deep red stone mostly because no ready alternative presented itself.

Later, when we’d met back up with Sheila, we sat down on a concrete bench outside and when we did, I felt the deep red rock in my back pocket.

Oh yeah, I said to Sheila, one of the guys on stilts gave me this. I showed it to her and a look of horror took hold of her fine featured face.

What, I said, looking at the stone anew. But she wouldn’t say.

You should put that away, she said. And then, Who gave that to you, exactly?

Uh, a guy on stilts.

That’s when Raymond chimed in saying it was the red one, I think Raymond could actually be color blind, and I make a mental note to pay attention to observations with regard to color in the future.

We head back inside to see if the hot pink man on stilts is still at the party. Sheila’s dying to find him, and I’m just joking around like well if he’s still here he won’t be hard to find, being a hot pink man on stilts.

Sheila’s not interested in humor. I’m attributing her weird behavior to all the drugs. In that light, weird behavior seems completely par for the course. I want a beer.

I pull Sheila and Raymond in the direction of the bar, and as we’re waiting for an opening to wiggle through the crowd, we all see the hot pink man on stilts at once.

I’m starting to realize that Sheila wants to talk to him, but like how would that even work?

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Fish Market by Matthew Gilbert

There wouldn’t be ice for three more days. In 31 years, they had only run out twice. When the ice runs out, it follows a peculiar pattern. It first conspires to make itself beautiful to your eyes. Polished, round as the love in a bridegroom’s I do. How wonderful it seems—and how fine to be the only one who notices. Charlie Beano off the street has no idea what it looked like before when it was fresh chipped. Scourged out from larger bodies, and so sharp it’d just as soon slice you as anything, but you turn it to the bins, and put it work. But they don’t stay that way. They glass over after a little while and look so sweet. Sweet as forgetfulness.

“Agatha, is it?”

A man in a brown fedora. A Charlie Beano for sure. Young to be dressed the way he is. What’s he got in his hand?

“Agatha Tack?” he asks.

“I’m Agātha Täck.”

“Richard Tack is your husband?”

“Yes. Richard.”

The young man is looking everywhere but straight ahead. Out the door, he looks, again and again. Why come to a fish market if you’re just gonna fuss about what’s outside?

“Excuse me,” he says, and leaves.

His shoes are soft-soled, and they squish in the pools, meniscus-high, that have gathered on the cement of the floor. He puts his face in his elbow, like that Nosferatu creature from the pictures. He nearly crashes smack dab with a baby carriage, but then the young woman nearly runs him down and parks the carriage out front. She comes back. He doesn’t.

The past couple days, the smooth ice had glistened so that you simply had to touch it, rainbowed by salmon and bluefish oil. If winter never passed and ice never melted, you could leave the fish altogether and sell the frozen water like gemstones. Slick and smooth. If those stones spoke, you’d listen. If they promised, you’d go. If they faltered, you’d wait.

But they feel the heat, see. Can’t stop the sun like you just can’t stop some things. Pull the shades, shut the doors tight—doesn’t do you any good. That ice starts to dance. One moves, slides, the rest follow. Rats piping among the rats, each in his own turn. One by one, group by group, they lure each other click-clacking away. You can’t catch them all. And if you can, what good will it do you? The sun heats them. They can’t sit still. And they go.

“Mrs. Tack. You’re Mrs. Tack, aren’t yah?”

The young man is following a taller, older husky man like he’s a full-year puppy dog with his first lick of obedience. It’s loyalty that keeps him stuck on those heels, not love. They must see the same tailor, these two. Brown suits, brown loafers, brown fedoras—fit about as well as a diaper on a mouse. And they look about as happy wearing them as a cat wearing a necktie.

“Mrs. Tack,” says the husky, “we need to talk with you about your husband Richard.”

“Täck.”

“Scuse me?”

“Täck. There’s an umlaut.”

Husky and puppy dog exchange looks. Agātha turns to see the few lone, last crystalline orbs floating in a pool of water. Sunken below them are scallops, shrimp, clams, mussels, and parsley sprigs. What Agātha had wanted to think about, more than anything, were those last pieces of ice, looming over the setting of a scene so like the wild ocean—with all the creatures taking up their places and posts, acting parts they’d played just days ago. What is it that makes those last pieces of ice be the ones that remain? Doomed, yet not done. The rest went so quick. But they will take a long time to go.

Plop.

A ring plunks down in the middle of the glass bin that Agatha is watching and settles beside a solitary oyster. A silver ring. A large agate stone. Richard’s ring. His agate.

Agātha looks back to the men.

“We thought you might want it is all. Have a nice day, Mrs. Tack.”

They left. At some point the mother had fled. The carriage was gone. And the last of the ice shone in the afternoon sun.

[nycwritinggroup-blog]

Check out our archives here.

check out our archives here