Many thanks to Jess, I’ve kind of started writing again. Here are some bits:
1.
Formidably quiet. Yes he was. Not only that, but they had to turn it up.
He owns eight handkerchiefs, and two of them are embroidered Saturday. But there doesn’t seem to be any system, and he might carry Wednesday on Sunday. Someone asked him about it once.
He whispered, “You’re dead.”
He whispered, “Once more.”
Measured quietude is more effective. But then. . . .
But then he was on top of him, biting his cheeks, ripping the flesh away from his face, and spitting it away before lunging in for more. His fingers were making bruises where they weren’t breaking the flesh and if he had said anything during the frenzy, he would have said it calmly, quietly.
And he would have said it again, would have looked him right in his one, dangling eye and said it again.
2.
Surely that clicking is annoying, but what about the chewing of ice? It seems much nicer just clattering with the whiskey. Sour mash? Single malt? Don’t let’s be getting things mixed up now. I’ll take a sprig of juniper. I’ll take a spray of mint. There are reasons and then there are reasons. There are swigs and sips and slugs. There are wicker chairs.
One idea might be to reupholster the cushions, perhaps paint the trim. One idea might be to move the willow just sixteen feet to the south and attempt to salvage the view. Or we might or we could just or even perhaps but no, let’s just sleep on it.
In the middle of the night, the lattice-work warps, the wicker waves and reweaves itself. In the morning, there’s no more reason to sleep on it. The willow remains, but we can no longer see out, and there’s no place to sit anyway.
Thank goodness, and I think I’ll have another, thank you.
3.
Somewhere, she thought, somewhere there is a photograph where people are baring too many teeth, convinced for whatever reason that this moment is the happiest—No, she thought, it isn’t happiness that people show with their teeth, at least not always—sometimes, yes, that she had to admit, but not always—no, what people usually showed with their teeth was what they thought happiness might be. She didn’t believe, like many of her more cynical friends, that most people were desperately unhappy; rather, she was quite convinced that people simply didn’t know what happiness was—not something lasting but just moments, brief moments, which, now that she thought about it, could probably only be captured by a camera—and what she wanted, what she was looking for, was a photograph where too many people were baring their teeth at a singular, central character who had come to them to elicit this very facial expression. He would, of course, be wearing white gloves. What, she wondered, do white gloves have to do with happiness? But these are my desires, she though, I’m the one painting—no, composing this photograph which must already exist somewhere in the world. What else? The color red? Supple leather? Yes and no. Both of these things and something more. Three shades of red, and something blue and the leather, upon further rumination, seemed inconsequential to her. It was the other thing that drew her, and yet, she couldn’t name it, or didn’t want to. Perhaps I’ll focus on the reds some more, she thought.
Beautiful.