St. Paul Part 3

Steve re-squinted his eyes at the menu board, attempting to figure out the new type of drink he wanted to order. But his train of thought was cut short as the woman behind the counter asked "So, how are things?"

"Steve thinks he's going to order a different drink today." He said, letting his face play into a caricature of doubts for her benefit.

She switched her brown eyes over to Steve, pushing a wisp of hair behind her ear, "Oh really?"

"Yeah." Steve said still looking up at the board, oblivious to the grumblings in the line behind him. "I was thinking something sweeter."

She pretended to screw her mouth and eyes into thought, looking away from Steve with a wink. "We could throw some white chocolate in, flavor it with some vanilla and almond?"

Steve worried. "I'm not really a big fan of white chocolate."

"How about vanilla and almond? It tastes just like a Christmas cookie."

"Well, it's too hot out for Christmas." Steve broke his concentration with the menu, pulling out his wallet. "Better just give me the usual."

She relayed the order over to her barista and turned back to them. "I'm buying today."

"You bought yesterday." Steve said, throwing a generous tip into the bowl.

"Yeah, but that's just cos I like you guys. Jimmy, usual cuppa?" she asked, handing him the coffee she had already prepared.

"Thanks, Emma." Jimmy said, then thought about it. "What are you doing tonight?"

"What?"

"What are you doing after work?" he looked over at Steve for support, but Steve was already collecting his mocha. "The two of us were thinking about catching a quick drink after work. You should come along."

Emma looked nervously at the line or in a look to think this over more, he couldn't be sure. She said "I'm supposed to meet a friend."

Jimmy didn't waste any time, he just impulsed "Sounds boring. Bring them along. Come on, I guarantee good times. I haven't done that in years."

This time she brushed the strand of hair that was already behind her ear. "I'll think about it. Or, I mean, I'll, you know, I'll talk it over with my friend, and together, we'll, sorta, see what we can do."

"Five-thirty, We'll all meet at McGovern's. It'll be fun."

She smiled this time "Definitely maybe."

Jimmy and Steve left the line with their coffees, heading back through the skyway, listening to her ask the next person in line "So, how are things?"

St. Paul Part 2

The radio in the cubicle crackled with another report and again the topic was the merging of Minneapolis and St. Paul. According to the proposal, Minneapolis would annex all of St. Paul west of Snelling thus increasing the size of the states most major city and making it more national.

He stopped paying attention. He heard the name Minneapolis and thought about calling his old roommate Adam. Just a friendly call to see what was happening with Adam's life and his wife; how Adam's dad's money was still treating him. He removed his hand from the phone and went back to his keyboard.

Steve showed up, using his standard midweek salutation "Why, if it isn't the most miserable son of a bitch in the office. Aren't you going to take a break?"

"Yeah." He sighed, pushing the meaty part of his palms into his eyes to show the wear and tear, the stress level work was having on him.

"You want to grab a coffee or something?" Steve asked, playing the same sad part of the ritual out, then teased "If we go now you can see your coffee making girlfriend?"

The girl--woman now, of the coffee shop had graduated from the same college, the same degree and he was pretty sure she was smarter then him. She had chosen to go against the normal walk of work and started up her own coffee shop. They had been friends, it was a small enough school for that, but she had always remained on the outside, always with that boyfriend of hers.

"I think I'm going to order something different today." Steve said, craning his neck like all the other hopefuls at the drink menu.

"What are you thinking of?"

"I don't know, I'm feeling different, maybe something sweeter." Steve squinted his eyes, reading the fine print which explained what was in each of the drinks. Steve suddenly broke away, "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"

"The wife..." He tried to remember what he was doing, but all he could think about was Adam and his wife out for lunch. He did his best to push it back out of his head, looking blankly at Steve he said "I don't know. I don't think anything, but then again I don't run that part of my life."

"We could catch a drink or something?" Steve suggested.

"You could meet my friend Adam, then. He's taking my wife out to lunch this afternoon." He said it with a hope, wanting a weird look from Steve, something to say that this wasn't normal. Wives weren't supposed to go out with their husband's old college roommate.

Steve didn't take the bait, but went back to staring at the menu board "My wife is out of town, so really, I don't have anything. I wasn't thinking too late, just something to miss traffic."

He sighed, disappointed "Sure. This might turn into a regular thing if my wife gets her promotion."

"She's getting a raise?"

"Something like that. She's--" he took a second to collect his thoughts, group them together, let them fall out in the correct order. "She's prepping for the interview this afternoon with my old roommate Adam. Tomorrow she goes in to talk to her boss. She doesn't sound to worried about it though. She has Adam to help her."

"Well, that's exciting." Steve said, and his face clouded over as he did the math. "Hey, doesn't that mean she'll be making more money than you?"

"And she'll be out of town all the time."

"That's a shame." Steve said then moved back to the board. "You know what you're going to get?"

a note on st. paul and others to come

dear gentle coitusers--

i'm not proud of this story, but it does floor me for how much i understood at the time. much has changed over the ten years since this was written, or maybe it hasn't.

an explanation for the change of venue: i began reading melville's moby dick, and while i am a good way through it, my annotated copy is roughly 750 pages. so instead of letting the site go sans post i'll be putting up some old short stories of mine, ones that i have no hope of publishing. i discovered all of these in an old box i haven't gone through in some time so all the stories are ten years old or older. please grant patience and credence to a young, aspiring writer who was still swinging for the fences.

this first one is of particular interest as it is a story that has been banging around in my head since i was about seven. over the course of the last 26 years i have attempted it on multiple occasions, and it is (hopefully) coming to fruition in the novel i am currently working on. none of the characters in this short story emerge in the novel, yet many of the overlying urges and wants remain the same. it is interesting how little i knew about the city at that point.

i always hate it when a band comes out with a rarity b-sides album and expects the fans to buy it, but since these haven't been released i hope you'll enjoy them. while all of these stories are short stories, i believe blogs should be quick reads so all of the following short stories shall be released in serial form.

h. (i am old) richter

St. Paul Part 1

And as the soft blue light of morning slipped through the bedroom window he listened to his wife's soft snore, writing her another letter he would never send.

My mother never loved my father. Saturday mornings were the worst because he would work the early morning shift--maybe all days were like this, but this was the only one I was ever home for. Mom would sit next to me on the couch, holding me tightly while I watched cartoons. She never said much, but maybe that was because she was listening for the sound of the car pulling into the driveway. His key would fit into the lock and turn. She would squeeze me one last time, release me and walk gently, yet with purpose, into her room. I can still see her closing the door.

Dad would come in, and before he looked at me he'd look at the door to her room then let out this little sigh I've come to think of him as. He would walk over to me, scratch me on the head and walk into the kitchen to eat the lunch Ma made early in the morning. During her time.

They'd never yelled at each other; I wish they would've. I wish they would've just told each other exactly what they meant and then...

The letters were always left open ended which was his reason for never giving them to her, or this is what he told himself. He placed the scribbled over sheet methodically, carefully into his satchel. His hand paused over the rest of the letters, his greatest hits, and he looked up at the clock rationalizing how much time he had.

He excused himself from his desk, the letters and his wife, walking into the bathroom where he went to work on another morning ritual. A ritual that didn't last as long anymore, and brought him a lot less thrills than it used to.

After cleaning up with the usual guilt and trying not to make eye contact with the mirror, he made his way into the kitchen where he saw his wife's list of things to do. She had always been organized like that, always starting her lists with Courtney's Things to Do. He'd never been able to keep his life that organized, no matter how much she'd tried to help him.

He poured himself a mug of coffee letting his eyes glance over the list. There was the name: Adam. Adam, his friend Adam. Adam who was his old roommate in college, not hers. Adam who, since moving into his cushy Minneapolis suburban three bedroom, two bath bachelor pad had not left her Courtney's Things To Do. That day the note read Lunch with Adam at Filio's to prep for interview.

Adam: the name stared at him more than he stared at it. He contemplated crossing Adam's name off the list, and putting his own in its place. He even went so far as to take a couple of practice swipes across a piece of scratch paper to see if he could mimic her soft penmanship. These met with limited success and instead he did what he always did: cross off her Things To Do, replacing it with Others To Do. He hoped she would understand the subtle sarcasm.

The pen was placed back into his pocket, and he fished around on the counter for his car keys.

'the great gatsby' by f. scott fitzgerald

when i was younger i was enthralled by the romantic qualities of jay gatsby, but now i am older and see only the pathetic characteristics he possessed. the close of the book mentions being "borne back ceaselessly into the past", but for gatsby he never changed. the riches, the luster, even daisey herself meant nothing to him so much as that past.

the great gatsby is a book meant for the hottest month of summer. the perfect short read with a wealth of lines allowing the reader to forget the heat, the imposition of oncoming winter; it is a book designed for cigarettes and a gin rickey. it is a novel of little wasted words with all ideas building upon one another, clamoring towards the conclusion.

gatsby was not an idealist but a singular action. a dreamer of dangerous levels who set his life on a course where only the absolute would mean success. his problems perhaps are obliged by the fact he is not a materialist, but an extremely insecure man, basing most of what he views as success on the opinions others have. when he finds daisey it is less the woman he falls in love with, than others opinion of her and, in turn, her opinion over other objects.

this is not to say he was a man who wanted what he could not have; gatsby did not know what he wanted. he was capable of only creating an opulent desire and building on that desire until, eventually, he found a desire no one is capable of doing: turning back the hands of time. despite the fact he had daisey again, it was not enough for him to simply take her, he had to have her renounce the lost years.

it is impossible not to pity and love gatsby, despite the inability he had to give up, move on. should he have emerged from the pool on that pre-autumnal afternoon, he would not be able to believe it was all over. he was not a man capable of taking his own life, but his plans would have become more radical, more hopeless and desperate. if his own inattention to his and wolfsheim's business did not catch up with him, he would have continued on the trail of daisey. daisey's love for him, for whatever it was worth, would never live up to what he wanted, needed.

the book largely mirrors fitzgerald's own relationship with the chicago heiress ginevra king, who broke off a relationship with fitzgerald to marry, the also wealthy, william mitchell. while fitzgerald ended up marrying zelda sayer, perhaps his sweetest revenge came in immortalizing king forever in his works of fiction. the finest piece being a line he delivered to king after she asked him which character she was in fitzgerald's the beautiful and damned: "which bitch do you think you are."

the great gatsby never was a commercial success in fitzgerald's life. fitzgerald would grade his life as a general failure and himself a hack. the alcohol, zelda, tuberculosis all culminated in a massive heart attack while he was writing bit parts in movies for the quick cash he could get in hollywood.

perhaps the best way to remember fitzgerald comes from his off and on friend ernest hemmingway. this is one of my favorite quotes and comes from hemmingway's a moveable feast:

his talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust from a butterfly's wings. at one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. later he became conscious of his damaged wings and and their construction and he learned to think and and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

'the book thief' by markus zusak

this book is like crack.

my sister gave me markus zusak's, the book thief a couple of weeks ago. since then there has been a night where i was up until four in the morning reading, the inevitable "i should go grocery shopping, but i could read one chapter more" scenario, followed by the undesirable druggie habit of looking at the stash and trying to make it last as long as possible.

the actual plot of the book didn't seem intriguing, even the title of the book put me off somewhat. the broad plot is an orphan girl in nazi germany living with foster parents that hide a jew. she steals books as her act of escapism, bonds with her foster parents and learns that jews aren't bad people.

but there is so much more. this is a book about words and less about stories. it's how words can change a life. the power hitler had over words in how he conveyed an entire nation of people. and how stolen words and given words have the ability to shape and make a life.

it is told from the perspective of death, producing a piece of enjoyable meta-fiction as most of the book is his recounting of the autobiography of the main character, liesel meminger. a character that author zusak claims took him three years to fully develop. death is a conceited character, one who has no qualms with beginning the book with how the story will end. because to the character death, beginnings and endings don't matter, it is how the time is spent living that make the human experience interesting. death fleshes out the life and surrounding cast of lives, covering a five year period of the nazi rise to power and the bombing of munich.

to read that statement back, it sounds like this is a blatant rip off of a kurt vonnegut book. but while vonnegut is constantly pushing the story, zusak allows the characters to develop, tantalizing the reader with each drippy sentence to read the next chapter.

perhaps this review is put best into practical terms by my friend audra, who stated this is the sort of book you don't lend out, you tell people about and expect them to go buy it.