Ivy Mariel

yay! my article was in the D

2005-09-11T07:43:15Z

http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005090102050

ivy_mariel @ 2005-04-24T02:30:00

2005-04-24T06:35:33Z

So I've been reading some Derrida lately. He's ridiculously hot, among other things.

ivy_mariel @ 2005-03-05T10:42:00

2005-03-05T15:43:22Z

This is why Las Vegas is AMAZING.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/03/04/mayor.gin.ap/index.html

-christina told me about this...she is the fount of all information that is interesting and worthwhile to read. because of her, i no longer have to read the new york times or cnn myself because i know she will provide me with links to all the good articles. oh man, its amazing.

ivy_mariel @ 2005-03-02T13:54:00

2005-03-02T18:55:09Z

"We like art because it is, by definition, un-commodifiable."

-says sylvia, who is fucking brilliant

for anyone who feels like reading it

2005-02-16T06:56:32Z

Newest Story (a first draft...)

Grace sneaked through the neatly trimmed bushes that lined the front of her parent’s split-level home. Crawling in her sister’s window had been a weekly practice for her twenty years ago, when she had stayed out past curfew, and her mother had locked her out yet again, leaving sacks of her clothing waiting for her on the front porch. The first time, Grace had pounded on the door, her breath catching in her throat, for what seemed hours, but no one heard her, or at least, no one let her in. So Grace had pulled her pink cashmere sweater from one of the sacks and slept in the backyard hammock, shivering through the night, watching the stars and waiting for morning.
When the sun had risen, her sister Alice found her, waking her up, and she had led Grace inside, making her hot chocolate and cinnamon toast, since her mother refused to set her a place at the breakfast table, refused to look at Grace at all. Alice had whispered to Grace to knock on her window next time, that she would let her in. But Alice, still single, lived across town now. Since Grace had joked that she had been married enough for the both of them, even if Alice had still lived there, it was unlikely she would have opened a window for Grace anymore.
            Car headlights flashed against the side-paneling of the house, and Grace ducked clumsily to the ground.   She could smell the raw earth beneath her, feel the coldness of soil damp against her palms. She peered at the street, hoping it would clear, past a row of snapdragons, which were a deep scarlet in the moonlight. She had planted the flowers with her father last June while he was still alive.
            “Grace,” he had said, gripping a snapdragon, its head twisted to one side, its muddy roots dangling, as though he were choking it.
She had turned to face her father, seeking out his eyes which reminded her of a bright and cloudless sky.
He was squinting against the sunlight. “Have you seen my ducks yet?” he had asked, his voice rumbling in his chest.
Grace had shaken her head.
“There’s a whole family living in the pond down the road a ways.”
“Would you like to show them to me when we’re finished?” Grace had rested her hand on his shoulder, and he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Later, in the thinning afternoon light, the pair had walked to the pond, and Grace looped her arm through the space between the crook of her father’s elbow and his ribs.   The two stood side by side on a bridge that spanned the length of the water. Grace’s chest twinged as her father explained that he had been watching the ducks as they grew from ducklings to full grown birds.
“They feel like they’re mine somehow, I’ve watched them for so long.”
“That’s sweet, Dad.”
“What was that?”
Grace had forgotten sometimes to talk louder now that he was losing his hearing.
“You’re so sweet,” Grace had said loudly, smiling, and then she added softly, “you funny old guy,” as she patted her father’s arm, wondering how a retired mathematician could be so happy to spend his days watching birds.
“I’m probably just being selfish,” he had said, “but it’s sure great to see you. You ought to come by more.” His shoulders hunched a little as he spoke, and Grace noticed how frail he seemed compared to the massive wall of a man he had been. He was still tall, but painfully thin, and he had a sore on his left temple that didn’t seem to heal.
“I will,” Grace had said, imagining what it would be like to spend time with both of them, her mom too, watching TV in their living room with the sound off. Her mother had said that the sound was distracting. It’s just a bunch of fuddy-duddy nonsense, she said. The air had felt chilly, and Grace hugged herself, rubbing her arms for warmth. Her father had wrapped his arm around her shoulder, huddling close to her to keep her warm as they walked back toward the house.
The screech of car tires turning in gravel brought Grace back to the dark where she crouched low to the ground, waiting for a chance to pry open Alice’s old bedroom window. When the road cleared, Grace crept to the glass, and to her surprise, found it unlocked. She slid the clear panel over and took a deep breath and held it as she climbed through the window onto Alice’s desk below.
Grace moved noisily through the room and switched on the light. Her mother took a pill lately that knocked her out for a solid eight hours, a heavy sleeper anyway, and her bedroom was on the top floor of the house.   Grace could have gunned the roaring engine of her motorcycle in the basement, crashing through the window and racing it through the hallways, and her mother would not have noticed, or even if she had heard the commotion, she would not have acknowledged it. Better not to know, her mother always said.
Alice’s room was no different now than it had been back in high school—her wall of ribbons and trophies; even her cheerleading captain’s sweater was pinned up there.
A single, black-framed picture rested on her dresser. Grace had never noticed it before, but it was of Alice and Grace’s second husband, David, sweating visibly together in front of a rose bush in the sticky summer air.   Alice and David had dated while they were in high school, and it was not until college that David took an interest in Grace, and they were married, easily, in the family’s backyard in front of that same rose bush on a cloudy day in April.
At the funeral for her father, Grace had pulled Alice close in a tight embrace. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Grace had said, sobbing.
Alice’s body had stiffened. “You have to admit, it’s not like he was ever really here.” She pulled away from Grace’s arms. “Even when he was in the room, his head was somewhere else.”
“He was here for me,” Grace had said. “I never even considered the possibility that one day he might not be around anymore.”
“Well you wouldn’t, would you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Alice had said. Her eyes were stony and dry.
At dinner following the funeral, Grace had stared across the table at Alice and her mother. She had looked at the empty seat next to her and tears welled up in her eyes.
“You should have brought Rob,” her mother said to Grace.
“Rob went back to Seattle for a while,” she had said. Rob was Grace’s fourth husband. He had moved out because she had been cheating on him with a law student and later, with Rob’s friend, Dean.
“You should hold on to this one,” her mother had said as she patted Alice on the arm. “You aren’t as young as you used to be, and there is nothing worse than being alone,” she had paused, looking at Alice, “Is there, sweetie?”
Alice had looked down at her dinner plate and did not respond.
“Poor Alice, you’ve had it worst of all, haven’t you dear?”
“Mom, stop,” Grace had said. “Not everyone gets married. It’s not like marriage is all that great.   It is mostly just people who don’t like each other very much pretending to get along.”
“Oh just shut up,” Alice had said to Grace.
“Besides,” their mom had butted in, “Your father and I had a wonderful marriage for fifty three years. That’s something.”
The three had eaten then in silence, the tears still pouring down Grace’s cheeks.   After the dinner, Alice had gotten up abruptly and walked to the door. Her mother had followed her and hugged her tightly, speaking in a quavering voice close to Alice’s ear, “Your father loved you, you know he loved you.” She had kissed Alice on the cheek.
“I know, Mom,” Alice had said, opening the door to leave. “Goodbye, Grace.”
Now in the bedroom, Grace held the photograph of Alice and David in trembling hands. She sighed and set the picture down again on the mahogany dresser.
Grace walked out of Alice’s room and left the door gaping open, the lights still blazing.   The basement had another bedroom which the family used as a study, and another large room used mainly by her father for storage. It had been seven months since her father’s funeral, but her mother was just now starting to sort through all his old belongings in an attempt to clear the clutter in the house.
She did not know what it was she was looking for tonight, mostly, Grace just wanted to thumb through the musty books, smelling their binding, hoping to find a bit of her father still in them. She thumbed quickly through a book with a plain brown cover, and seeing as that her father had written nothing in it, she dropped it on the ground.
She pulled a book titled Rings from the shelf, looking through the pages of symbols, understanding none of them. Grace liked the way the pages flowed, a swirling mass of marks, beautiful in themselves, in the way they stacked up and fit together, each page was different, a whole galaxy of information, inaccessible to her. Her father’s scrawling writing filled the margins, dancing with the delight of newfound understanding.
Grace closed the book and slid it back into its spot, knocking against something that rolled behind the books along the wooden shelf. Grace pulled the book back out and reached her hand back into the dark shadows of the bookcase. Her fingers found a small, smooth object. Grace held it, tiny, in her hands. It was a whistle made of bird bone, the whistle her father made for her and never ended up giving to her. For a moment she looked at the delicate whistle in disbelief.
Grace remembered trotting home from grade school and finding a barn swallow with a broken wing, a black form on the snow-covered sidewalk.   She had scooped it up in a red cloth and carried it with her, only to realize it was already dead when she plopped it down exactly on the paper her father had been studying on the new theory of fractal geometry. He would explain the theory to Grace later, while they worked on making the whistle, about how fractals were like snowflakes, the kind that Grace caught on her tongue, the kind that stuck in her thick blond eyelashes and that melted on her cheeks as she had walked home from school.
“I found a bird,” Grace had said. “Can you fix her, Daddy? I found her freezing in the snow.”
“What do you know?” he had said, not looking up from his paper. “I wonder how the little fellow ended up here in January.” Her father, noticing the stiffness of the dark little body, had pulled Grace into his lap. “I’m sorry, Gracie honey, but this bird isn’t alive anymore. It must have been too cold for the poor thing.”
When Grace started to blink furiously, trying not to cry, her father had said, “You’ll be okay. Things dying is a natural part of life. There there, sweetie, you don’t need to cry anymore.”
“But if she’s dead, that means she’ll go to heaven and disappear.”
Grace’s father had squeezed her tightly in his arms. Her face felt hot and she hiccupped with sobs.
“Nothing ever really disappears, Gracie,” her father had said. “When we die, our bodies are returned to the earth, and from that, flowers grow, and we are always in the new life, and that, my dear, is our eternity.”
“I don’t want to bury her,” Grace had said.
“What do you want to do with it?”
Grace had pressed her head into her father’s broad chest, shaking her head against his soft flannel shirt. “I don’t know,” Grace wailed.
It was not until later that her father had come up with the idea of making a whistle. His father had made one for him back when he was a boy living on a farm, so that if he ever got lost in the cornfields, he could blow the whistle until someone found him. Grace’s father had cleaned the flesh from the bone at night while she slept, and together they baked the bones to dry them, and her father whittled three small holes in the biggest one, and tied a leather string to it so Grace could wear it as a necklace.
“For if you ever feel lost,” her father had said.
Grace had nodded solemnly to her father and then she grinned at him.
When Alice had seen the necklace around Grace’s neck, she said she wanted one too, and cried to their mother, who upon seeing the necklace, had proclaimed it filthy and demanded it be thrown out immediately. She yanked it over Grace’s head and threw it in the garbage, from where Grace’s father retrieved it later, and hiding it in his bookshelf, told Grace should could get it when her mother had forgotten about it, provided she could keep it hidden.
But Grace had forgotten the necklace too, and it lay hidden in the bookshelf all those years, gathering dust. It was the one place her mother never bothered to clean. Grace had remembered the bookshelf suddenly, waking from a formless dream, a few days after her mother had told Grace she was going to be clearing out the basement.
            Now, Grace clutched the bird whistle in her hand, remembering the way her father stooped over her as he placed it around her neck. She put the whistle to her lips, and blew.
            A high, airy needle of sound emerged from the hollow bone. She covered one of the holes with her finger, making a lower, husky whistle. It played eight notes in all, like a tiny flute. It would be easy, Grace thought, to stay in the basement forever, pouring over her father’s books and journals, scraping together the traces of life the man had left behind. It felt remarkably easy to get along with the dead.
            “What in the world,” Grace heard her mother’s voice behind her.
            “Mom,” Grace said, surprised.
            “What in the Lord’s name are you doing here at this hour?”
            “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
            “Why are you creeping around in my house in the middle of the night, pray tell?”
            Grace sighed. She kept the whistle tucked carefully in her palm. “I missed Dad. I thought maybe if I looked through his old books and stuff, it’d make me feel better.”
            “Of course you’d miss him,” she said accusingly.
            “What is that supposed to mean?” Grace said. Her palms were sweating, and she hoped desperately the whistle would not slip from her hand.
            “Nothing. I’m just surprised you didn’t marry him, too, when you had the chance. I mean, he was alive for forty years of your life, and you marry everyone else, for God’s sake. And heaven knows how he only spent time with you. Not for his wife, no, but he’d do anything for his baby girl.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You think there is just an endless supply of men out there, don’t you? You stole your sister’s boyfriend, and then threw him out like garbage.”
“God, Mom, that’s not fair. Why do you always say things like that to me?” Grace could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest, and her breathing became shallow.
“I never did anything to you. You wouldn’t let me if I tried. You don’t need an apology from me.”
Grace looked at her mother’s steely face. Her eyes were blank and unblinking. The real reason she had come to the house struck Grace suddenly.
“Why don’t you go home, sweetheart?”
“You’re what I have now,” Grace said, surprised. She sighed, watching as her mother’s stiff legs climbed the stairs out of the basement, and the Grace followed slowly behind, letting herself out the front door.
“Goodbye,” her mother said.
“Wait,” Grace turned toward her mother, the door ajar. “I thought I’d let you know, I’m going to try and make things work with Rob. I’m really going to try this time.”
“Good girl,” her mother said, turning her body towards the staircase. “It’s about time.”
            Before her mother could ascend the stairs, Grace embraced her, but she just stood, stiffly, her arms dangling by her sides. After a minute, Grace let her go, and left the house.
            The sun was rising, and the white morning sky was full of clouds.   Grace hopped on her motorcycle, wondering if she meant what she’d said about Rob as she put on a black helmet over her blond hair. She did not know. She put the whistle around her neck, tucking it hidden inside her shirt.
            Her ponytail whipped in the wind as she sped along down the empty road, feeling the crispness of morning, of the in-between hours, when the world was still sleeping.
            Grace saw a flock of birds, their black silhouettes flapping against the white clouds, swooping sharp down low over the ground. The birds looked like stones falling from the sky.
            The motorcycle sped down the lonely street. Grace rode the hour long trip to Alice’s house. The sun had risen when Grace pounded on Alice’s door, waking her up.
            “Grace,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
            “I felt like seeing you.”
            “That’s a surprise,” Alice said, pulling her bathrobe tight over her body. She did not readily open the screen door the separated them.
            “Yeah, yeah, come in,” Alice said. “I just still can’t believe you’re here.” She opened the door, and Grace slid quickly through, imagining that if she delayed, Alice might reconsider the invitation.
            “I’ll make you pancakes,” Grace offered.
            “Since when do you cook?”
            “Well I’m glad to know you have so much faith in me,” Grace said, smiling.
            The two sisters stood side by side at the stove, flipping thick, fluffy pancakes onto an already heaping pile. Alice made eggs, too, and strips of sizzling bacon.
            When the food was done, they sat at the table across from each other, pouring heavy syrup over steaming plates.
            “I told Mom I was going to try and work things out with Rob,” Grace said suddenly.
            “Did you mean it?” Alice said, her mouth half-full with a wad of pancake.
            “I’m not sure,” said Grace, who shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This was not so bad, Grace thought to herself. “After a while, all men seem the same. They sort of blur together. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ve just married the same man five times over.”
            Alice let out a deep sigh, as if she were trying to control something within her from spilling out suddenly.
            “You know, never mind,” Grace said. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
            Alice nodded.
            They left the dishes dirty in the sink, and Alice dressed quickly. They let the front door bang shut as they made their way outside into the dewy morning.
            They walked for a while in silence, until they reached a park, and Grace kicked off her shoes so that she could walk barefoot in the grass. Alice stretched out and lay on a sunny patch of ground. Grace looked at Alice, thinking to herself that this here, with her sister, was what she had now.   She closed her eyes with a sigh. A dove cooed from the trees. It was enough, she thought, to have this moment. It had to be.

Newest story

2005-01-31T16:39:26Z

I just finished this story. Anyone who wants to is welcome to read it....

The Way We Get By
            Ruby sat stiff-legged on the kitchen floor, wearing Ninja Turtles underwear and a black t-shirt.   Her hair stood disheveled on her head as she counted out two piles of cash. She had woken up sweating, remembering the electric bill which was past due, and she had sprinted to the kitchen in a panic. Ruby took the small pile and put it back in the jar next to the microwave. She promised herself she would pay the bill today.
            Her sister, Raquel, who everybody called Ricki, was still sleeping. Ruby liked herself all right, until she was next to Ricki, who stood half a foot taller than Ruby, with brown hair falling down her back and thick eyebrows that worked against the softness of her face.
            The girls were headed to the shooting range for the afternoon. That was if Ricki could get her skinny ass out of bed before three.
            Ruby yawned and stretched, cracking her back. She jerked her head to one side. Her neck made a loud pop.
            “Hey, fuck you, Ricki,” Ruby yelled as she wandered into the bedroom.   “We’re missing out on all the good shooting.”
            A heap of blankets rolled off the bed, and Ricki came with them. She grabbed Ruby by the ankles and pulled her down. Ricki squinted at the light.
            Ruby put her hands over her face and shut her eyes tight. “My head is killing me. I feel way older than twenty already.”
            “It’s too early,” Ricki whined, trying to climb back into bed. “I can sleep all day if I want.”
            Ruby tugged on Ricki’s arm.     “You have to get up,” Ruby said. She ripped a poster off the wall and held it in Ricki’s face.   The picture showed a middle-aged blonde and her mustached husband. “I know you want to put a hole right here,” Ruby said, tapping the blonde’s forehead. “You’ve been waiting for this all week.”
            It was Ruby’s idea to blow up the photograph of their step-mom, Janet, into a life-sized poster and take it to the shooting range for some target practice.   Ruby thought about how Janet had kicked them out of the house, Ruby at fourteen and Ricki just last year.
            “What’d you say?” Ruby said.
            “I guess I could get up for that.” Ricki said. She laughed.
            Ruby grabbed jeans from a heap on the floor and without even bothering to undo the zipper, she pulled them up over her narrow hips, her Ninja Turtles underwear disappearing under her denim pants. “Well I’m ready,” she said.
            “Now I know why you smell like an old shoe,” Ricki said. “I’m going to take a shower.”
            “For Christ’s sake,” Ruby said. “We’re going to a shooting range with a bunch of dirty old men.”   When Ruby saw that Ricki was already grabbing a towel and walking to the bathroom, she said, “Hurry up then.”
            While the shower hissed and the pipes in the walls clanged, Ruby stood in front of the mirror, raking her fingers through uncombed hair. The black hair dye was growing out and her blond roots were starting to show, making it look as though her hairline was receding slightly. She let her hair hang limply down the sides of her face then rimmed her eyes with kohl and globbed on black mascara. Her face was too pale. Ricki had said it looked like she went tanning under moon beams.
            Ricki emerged from her room half an hour later, wearing a tight sleeveless denim jumpsuit, knee-high red boots, and red-framed sunglasses which she wore on top of her head, pushing her hair back.
            “Jesus, you look like a model in that getup.”
            Ricki let out a loud, honking laugh.   “K-mart couture,” she said. “Perfect for shooting things with guns.”
            “How else are we going to spend our day off?” Ruby said. It seemed like they were always at the bakery, smearing thick slabs of frosting over boxy cakes.
            “Well, I could still be sleeping.”
            “You can sleep all day when you’re dead. Today will be fantastic, I promise.” Ruby grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her out the door.
            The front of their Geo Metro had been smashed in before they bought it used, and only the passenger door opened anymore, so Ruby waited as Ricki climbed into the driver’s seat.   The summer Las Vegas heat made Ruby’s skin feel sticky. She thought of all the cars driving, the way the exhaust caught in the air and stayed hovering over the valley, and she coughed.
            “Get in already,” Ricki said.   She cranked the volume up on the Eminem song which vibrated out of the speakers. “He’s a fucking genius. If he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and all that shit, he’d be the next Willie Shakespeare or something. I’d bet you a million bucks.”
            Ruby didn’t say anything.   She was watching the road, the way the cars slid past and buildings blurred into streaks of color.
            The car in front of them braked suddenly. Ruby slammed her foot into the floor, pumping an imaginary break. “Hit the brakes,” She screamed.
            “Calm down, you spaz,” Ricki said as she switched lanes quickly. She twisted the radio off. “I don’t need a back seat driver here.” She added, “It’s not like you have a driver’s license anyway.”
            “That’s not fair and you know it,” Ruby said. “I got kicked out before I was old enough to learn to drive.” Ruby clutched her hand tightly on the door.
            “And that was what, six years ago?”
            “Will you just watch the road?” Ruby sighed.   She was waiting to take her driver’s test when she learned to parallel park. She could line the car up between the cones alright, but every time she backed into the space, the car seemed to slip out again like a wet bar of soap. Ruby would check the curb in a burst of triumph only to realize that the car was no more in the spot than before.
            Ricki had offered some pointers, but Ruby plugged her ears. There was no way in hell her younger sister was going to teach her how to drive. .
            The roads were all backed up, first Sahara, then Tropicana, all the way to the shooting range called Big Boys, which had gotten a lot of press recently for being the brains behind the Bambi Hunts. Ruby shuddered. She imagined being one of the Bambi women, her bare breasts flapping as she ran, feet burning on the sand, naked in a fenced patch of desert, chased by a rich man with an automatic paint gun.
             She knew the women who got shot, splattered in red paint and stinging welts, got paid a thousand bucks for the hour, and the ones who escaped clean got five grand. It was better if the women put up a fight, they’d been told, it made the hunt seem more authentic. Men were paying good money, fifty grand, for the hour, they deserved a good show. Mostly only high rollers at the casinos had that kind of cash.   Ruby wondered what it’d be like to have money like that. She shook her head.
            “Hey Ricki.”
            “What?”
            “We oughta get some paint guns and shoot Janet with them. We could drive up to Salt Lake and give her a good scare.” Ruby waited, letting the dead air hang between her and her sister. “That bitch would probably think she’d really been shot. It’d be fucking hilarious.”
            “Yeah, it’d be a real laugh riot,” Ricki said stonily.
            “C’mon,” Ruby said. “Remember when we made her pot brownies and she ate like four and finally I had to knock the rest on the floor so she wouldn’t eat them all?” Ruby’s voice wavered. “We told her we made them “special” for her, and she totally didn’t get it.   Miss IPretendToBePerfect scarfing down pot brownies like a prize pig.”
            “You mean you,” Ricki said suddenly.
            “Me?”
            “Yeah, remember when you made her pot brownies.” She was squeezing the steering wheel between white fingers.
            “Oh Ricki, we were in on that together.”
            “No, we weren’t. I thought it was a funny idea, but you were the one twisted enough to actually go and do it.”
            “Yeah, well as far as I’m concerned, Janet got what was coming to her.”
            “Oh shut up already, with your Cinderella complex. You know, you weren’t very nice to her either.”
            “So now you’re defending her?” Ruby said. “She did shit to you too. She broke your fucking toes, Ricki, when she was all boozed up, and then she kicked you out of the house.”
            “I kicked the wall.”
            “Whatever, you wouldn’t have kicked the wall if she wasn’t chasing you around.”
            Ricki pressed her lips together tightly and looked out the window away from Ruby. Ruby could see her blinking back tears.
            “Oh man, I’m sorry Ricki,” Ruby’s voice had gotten low and soft.
            “You know, they said all sorts of bad things about you, how you are just a selfish brat,” Ricki let the words vibrate in the air. “But I said they didn’t know you. I defended you, okay?”
            Ruby knew they really did think she was a selfish brat.   She sighed, and rested her hot face against the cool window, closing her eyes.
            Ricki turned the radio back on, letting the noise flood the car.   Ruby watched out the window again, seeing a row of palm trees flash past.
            Ruby wanted to open the door and tumble out of the car, hurtling into oncoming traffic. It was amazing people didn’t do that more often. It would be so easy. Just one slip, one second of bad judgment is all it would take and then there would be chaos and after that only darkness and nothingness. She sighed again and clicked the lock door button, just to make sure.
            The car skidded on gravel in the parking lot. Ruby and Ricki had arrived at a flat, stucco building that said Big Boys across the side in sea blue letters.
            “You sure you want to do this?” Ruby asked.
            “I didn’t drive for an hour to go straight back home. Get out.” Ricki waited as Ruby slid out of the car, and then she climbed clumsily over the seats, stumbling out the door.
            Inside sounded like a war zone. The girls entered through the front of the store, which had rows of hand guns, sub-machine guns, ammo, camouflage shirts. Two men at the counter were staring.
            “Can we help you ladies find anything?” said one of the men. He had blond hair greased back and his nose and cheeks were sunburned. His arms carried muscles the size of bowling balls.
            “We want to shoot this,” Ruby said, holding up the poster of Janet.
            “You mean in the shooting range?” he said.
            Ruby nodded.
            “I think we can do that,” he said. “I’m Jonas, by the way. That there,” Jonas said, pointing to a skinny man at the counter, “is Kyle.”   Kyle had his head down, so his face was covered by a hat that read “Lil’ Darlings”. When they got closer, Ruby saw that Kyle was playing with a Game Boy.
            “I’m Ruby,” she pointed to her sister, “that’s Raquel.”
            “Ricki,” she said, staring at Jonas’ extended hand but not taking it.
            “Nice to meet you,” Jonas said. He grabbed the poster from Ruby and looked at it. “Thanks, girlie. You ladies been to a shooting range before?”
            Ruby and Ricki shook their heads.
            “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you,” Jonas grinned. He led them to the counter, where Kyle whipped out release papers and asked the girls to sign.
            “You girls over eighteen, right?” Jonas said.
            “You want to see ID?” Ruby said, biting on her pen cap.
            “Normally, it’s the policy,” Jonas said, “but I’ll take your word for it.” Jonas winked at Ricki.
            “Thanks,” Ruby said. “How much do we owe you?”
            “It’s on the house,” Jonas said, winking at Ricki again.
            Jonas led the pair down a glaringly white hallway bright with fluorescent lights. Ricki punched Ruby’s arm.
            “What did you do that for?” Ruby whispered, rubbing her arm.
            Ricki glared at her but didn’t answer.
            The three arrived at a white door that read Private. “This is where we give training classes for security guards. I’m going to set you ladies up in here. What kind of guns did you want to use?” Jonas said as he led the girls into the room.
            Ruby shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. A machine gun? How about, surprise us?”
            “I’ll see what we can do. Here, put these on,” Jonas said, tossing what looked like white headphones to the girls. “I’ll be right back,” he said and he closed the door behind him.
            When Jonas was gone, Ricki hissed, “Ruby, I changed my mind. Let’s go.”
            “Why?”
            “That guy is hitting on me. It creeps me out.”
            “Jesus, he probably had something in his eye. Really, Ricki, you think every man alive is after you, don’t you?”
            “I do not,” Ricki said.
            Ruby looked at Ricki’s eyes and sighed. “Fine, we can go. Can I just take one shot? Then I promise we’ll go. Please?”
            “Fine,” Ricki said. She raised her shoulders slightly and hugged herself.
            After a long wait, Jonas came back with Kyle in tow.   Kyle was holding a handgun with a black grip and a silver barrel. Ruby’s eyes fell on the gun, moving over the liquid smooth surface.
            “Who wants to go first?” Jonas asked, searching Ricki’s face for a sign of approval. Ricki looked purposefully off at the wall, facing away from Jonas. Finally he looked at Ruby. “How about it, Ruby?”
            “Yeah, sure.” Ruby took the gun. It was heavy in her hand. Her skin suddenly felt damp, like the gun was just going to slip out of her fingers. Jonas stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her, holding the gun too.
            “When you shoot, aim for the target, okay?” Jonas said. “And you are going to feel a bit of what we call ‘recoil’, but that is normal. Just relax. I’m right behind you.”
            Ruby tried to concentrate, but she could smell Jonas’ hair, thick with oils, and she could hear electronic music coming from behind her. She looked back to see Kyle, leaning against the wall. He had brought his Game Boy with him.   Ruby looked at the target, at Janet’s gigantic, grinning face tacked on the wall. She pulled the trigger. She expected to feel an explosion of raw power, a sense of release. But it happened so quickly. The gun recoiled, and Ruby felt like she was being pushed backward into Jonas.   She laughed.
            “That’s it?” Ruby said.
            “That’s it.” Jonas smiled at her.
            Ruby handed the gun back to Jonas. “It’s been fun, Jonas,” she said. “I think we are going to head out. Thanks.”
            “You’re leaving already?” Jonas made a pouty face. “Kyle, tell the girls how much they’ll miss out on if they go now.”
            Kyle muttered something but did not look up from his Game Boy.
            “We have to go,” Ruby said. Ricki nodded.
            “Okay, that’s fine,” Jonas said. “Are you girls hungry?”
            “Yes,” Ricki said suddenly. “I’m starving. We have to go eat.”
            “Great,” Jonas said. “Let’s all get dinner then. You can pick the restaurant. Kyle’ll come too. We’re both off soon anyway.”
            Ruby mouthed the words free dinner at Ricki, who just shrugged.
            “Dinner would be good. We’ll drive,” Ruby said.
            When Jonas and Kyle got off work ten minutes later, Ruby watched as they climbed into the car’s cramped backseat.
            Ricki drove, weaving in and out of the heavy traffic along the Strip. She turned the radio up loud so that no one could talk. The sky was dark, and Ruby watched the blinking flash of neon everywhere.   The two men coughed and fidgeted in the backseat. Ruby lost herself in the glamour and the rainbow illusion of the city.
            Ruby wanted Indian food, and so did Ricki, so the group decided to go eat at Gandhi. A sign outside boasted the best food in Las Vegas.
            Jonas insisted on sitting next to Ricki in the booth, so Kyle sat hesitantly next to Ruby. He reached for his pocket to pull out his Game Boy, but Jonas caught his eye and shook his head. Kyle folded his hands in his lap and sat quietly instead.
            Jonas was explaining to Ricki how he was saving up his paychecks to buy a place of his own.
            “So who do you live with now, Jonas?” Ruby said, sipping a glass of wine.
            Jonas lowered his head as he admitted he was living with his mother. He went on to explain how he had tried going to college, studying philosophy, but one day, his professor started talking about how he might just be a brain in a vat thinking he was actually a whole person. Jonas told, his face reddening, how at that moment, he realized school was for whack-jobs and he walked out of the class and moved back home. He was just working at the gun store to make enough money to get a place of his own.
            “So what do you want to do once you have your own place?” Ruby asked. When Jonas just looked at her, Ruby went on, “I mean, what are your goals?”
            “Oh,” Jonas said. “Well then I’ll have parties and stuff. Play poker, watch football, relax. Maybe get married, have kids, you know.”
            “How are you going to afford all that?” Ricki asked.
            “Probably I’ll be a bouncer for a strip club,” Jonas said flexing his arm for everyone to see. “Or maybe, I’ll become an architect or something. I always wanted to do that.” Jonas shrugged his shoulders.   “To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it much. Mostly I’m just trying to get by. Also, my mom’s getting kind of old.   I feel like it’s nice to be home with her while she’s still around.”
            “That’s nice of you. How old are you Jonas?” Ruby squinted her eyes at him.
            “I’ll be thirty-two next month,” Jonas said.
            Ruby laughed then. She had always imagined that becoming a grown up was a linear process. She saw herself, and others, shooting up like an arrow on a set and irreversible path.   She saw years stacking up like inches on a growth chart.   It had seemed so straightforward and simple, the path to the magic number, twenty-one, maybe or twenty-five, when a person was finally a real adult. Jonas seemed like he was just sort of flubbing along, slipping past the entrance to the adult world, still living with his mother.
            Jonas slid his arm around Ricki’s shoulder. Ricki said suddenly, “What about you Kyle?”
            “Huh?” Kyle said.   He had been staring off at another table.
            “Are you going to work at Big Boys forever?”
            “No, no,” Kyle said. “I’m just working there until I publish my book.”
            “Yeah?” Ruby said, turning to face Kyle. “What’s your book on?”
            “I’m writing about angels. You know, how they manifest themselves in this life, and how there are like thirteen different kinds. I’ve been doing research for a year and a half now.”
            Jonas piped up, “Yeah, old Kyle’s being modest. His book is going to change the whole fucking world, I guarantee it.” Jonas knocked twice on the table and then pointed to Kyle, grinning.
            The waitress brought the food, steaming dishes of rice and red and green curries.   She plunked a plate of chicken in yellow sauce on the table.
            “What the hell is this?” Jonas asked, eyeing the food.
            “It’s dinner,” Ricki said. She smiled.
            Ruby and Ricki ate hastily while Jonas and Kyle picked at the foreign dishes. Kyle looked like he might cry.   Ruby wondered how much they would pay to have a steak or a pizza right about then.
            Ruby saw Jonas put his hand on Ricki’s thigh and squeezed it tightly. Ricki tried to pull away but Jonas clenched his hand tighter, pressing his fingers deep into the flesh.
            “Where do you girls work?” Jonas asked Ruby.
            “We work at a bakery,” Ruby said. “It’s up town a ways.”
            “Well, can I feel your buns sometime then?” Jonas asked, laughing loudly at his own wit. Kyle laughed too. Ruby kicked Jonas under the table.
            “Come on now, that was fucking hilarious.”
            The table got silent then.
            Ruby looked at Jonas. “You know what, Jonas,” she said. “You are a fucking pig.”
            “Hey now,” Jonas said. “I’m not the one gobbling food down like a regular porker. God just look at this girl here.” He pointed to Ricki.
            “You are calling me a pig?” Ricki said.
            “I call it like I see it, baby,” Jonas said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his belly.
            Ricki stood up suddenly, and started scooping up rice by the handful with her bare fingers, smearing the rice in the yellow chicken sauce. She shoved the food to her mouth and gobbled it down, letting chunks of rice and sauce hang from her face. Her thin arms moved rapidly, as though she were a starving supermodel who had finally decided to eat. She licked the extra sauce off her fingers, one at a time, making a loud smacking noise with her lips. She grabbed a glob of chicken and said, “You’re the fucking pig, Jonas”, spitting bits of rice as she said it. She threw the handful of dripping food onto Jonas’ pants.   Jonas and Kyle sat, stunned in their seats.
            Ricki grabbed Ruby’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said. The girls ran out of the restaurant and jumped into the car, pulling out of the parking lot, their tires squealing.
            The drive back to their house took an hour, but it was late and the traffic was calm once they got past the Strip. Ruby closed her eyes and let herself be carried along. When they were home again, Ruby and Ricki took turns taking showers. Ruby stuffed a wad of cash in an envelope and put the electric bill in the mailbox. Later, the sisters sat on the couch in their pajamas watching Ghost World. Ruby was brushing the tangles out of Ricki’s hair. The heat from outside was creeping into the house, through cracks in the walls and poorly shut windows.
            “I’m sorry,” Ruby said. “About earlier, about everything.”
            “I know you are,” Ricki said.
            Ruby touched a bit of Ricki’s hair, feeling the softness of it. Ruby’s hand looked small and it trembled slightly.   She looked at her sister, her face glowing in the ethereal lights coming in the window, cast down from the moon.
            “I know you are,” Ricki said again.

ivy_mariel @ 2005-01-16T21:56:00

2005-01-17T02:56:55Z

The Chardin Exhibition
by Edward Hirsch

While I was studying the copper cistern
and the silver goblet, a soup tureen
with a cat stalking a partridge and a hare,

you were gulping down the morning light
and moving from the bedstand to the bureau,
from the shuttered window to the open door.

While I was taking my time over a pristine jar
of apricots and a basket of wild strawberries—
a pyramid leaning toward a faceted glass—

you were sitting at a low breakfast table
and eating a soft-boiled egg—just one—
from a tiny, hesitant, glittering spoon.

While I was absorbed in a duck hanging
by one leg and a hare with a powder flask
and a game bag, which you wanted me to see,

you were lying on the living-room couch
for a nap, one of your last, next to
a white porcelain vase with two carnations.

I wish I could have stood there with you
in front of Chardin's last self-portrait,
exclaiming over his turban with a bow

and the red splash of his pastel crayon—
a new medium—which he used, dearest,
to defy death on a sheet of blue paper.