hard-boiled - \HAHRD-BOYLD\
Adjective:
1a : devoid of sentimentality : tough
1b : of, relating to, or being a detective story featuring a tough unsentimental protagonist and a matter-of-fact attitude towards violence
2 : hardheaded, practical
Her favorite books are the old detective novels. The heroes, dark and brooding, practical and relentless in the pursuit of justice. She spends hours under the covers imagining black toned alleyways, gun fights, and in the end, murderers behind bars and the hero at his desk, scotch or whiskey in hand.
She stole a swig of her father's whiskey once, but it burned all the way down. It made her love those PIs in her books even more. Men who drank whiskey could handle anything, bullets and fist fights included.
She inherited most of these books from the same father whose whiskey remains in the dusty liquor cabinet in the den. He wandered out the door one day and never came back, but he left these things behind at least.
When she hides away with her books she always pictures the detective as her father. Dark hair and dark eyes, a face like weathered stone and shoulders broad but hunched. He haunts the loneliest nights and most dangerous cities, making the world safer one long distance bedtime story at a time.
She knows that sometimes, in some books, the hero loses. Sometimes he dies and a killer goes free. When this happens she methodically tears out the offending pages. She'll rip them into strips and one at a time burn them away in her mother's ashtray in the middle of the night. When it's over, it's as if the ending never happened at all.
The next day, she'll find a new book to read, always certain the ending will be the right one.
deem - \DEEM\\
Verb:
1 : to come to think or judge : consider
2 : to have an opinion : believe
There's a thing about 1 am at Joe's. That late at night the boy's have had a few. More than a few maybe. Maybe even quite a lot. Tending bar I try to keep track, to know who's too gone and who is just shy of too gone. That's not the thing though.
Barney is usually the first to get truly boisterous. He has the kind of voice that blusters like a strong wind and the more beers he had the louder the storm. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't have to talk politics.
Barney has opinions. He owns opinions like a religious nut or a member of a cult. I tune him out but little Andy Pratchet can't do it. You can see the tension in his hunched shoulders escalate with each explosion issuing from old Barney's lips. He's a tiny, red grenade waiting to go off. See, because Andy has opinions too.
It only takes about fifteen minutes before the two are screaming at each other. Glasses of beer swinging dangerously between them, tipping and sloshing wetly onto my floor. I'll have to clean that up later. Barney leans over Andy like some gnarled and very angry oak tree. Andy is a viper hissing and snapping around Barney tossing barbed words like darts from a blow gun.
It ain't pretty, is mostly what I'm saying. Andy and Barney are only the beginning of course, because at 1 am every drunk in the world is a Haver of Opinions. There's still an hour to closing and I surely can't pry Andy and Barney apart and at least they haven't exchanged blows. The rest of the bar alights with more yelling and posturing. I try to let it slide over me while I start closing up tabs. By 1:45 I'll need to start tossing people out anyway.
When I've pushed the last drunk out the door and the bar is finally, blissfully silent, I grab a mop and start to clean up the spilled beer. I hum to myself as I do and try to imagine a world where no one gives a shit about anything. It sounds almost lovely.
collop - \KAH-lup\
Noun:
1 :: a small piece or slice especially of meat
2 : a fold of fat flesh
She'd met him in a coffee shop. Not a chain, because he would never buy coffee from a chain. No, it was one of those local places, with bad art on the walls and spotty wifi. It had character. He only went to places that had character.
She first noticed his shoes, scuffed and worn DMs with stickers misaligned on the toes. By the time she saw his eyes, blue of course, she was smitten. She went back to the coffee shop every day for two weeks before she asked him his name.
He introduces her to all kinds of wonderful things. Bands with lengthy names played on vinyl; hummus with olives; poetry slams. They go to the art cinema and watch foreign films. She's never been happier.
He's vegan and he teaches her about sustainable food, animal cruelty and healthy living. She reads the books and watches the movies. She is a convert.
He tells her he loves her.
They live together in a studio apartment and he cooks for them every night. She loves his fajitas and she loves him too. She also has a secret.
On Friday mornings, when he leaves for work early she slinks out once he's gone. She walks down their block until she can smell the distinctive aroma of bacon sizzling. Around the corner is the diner. It's dirty, old, it doesn't even have character, not really. She's drawn in though. Her secret affair is a plate of pancakes with syrup and a hearty helping of bacon on the side.
She won't see him for several hours, but she chews several sticks of gum after to rid herself of the smell of unsustainable, cruel, bacon.
She loves him. When she sits back, chewing thoughtfully in a dim booth at the diner, she thinks that no two people can have absolutely everything in common.
Across town, before he goes to work, he buys a sausage and egg McMuffin, wolfing it down guiltily.
lapidary - \LAP-uh-dair-ee\
Noun:
1 : a cutter, polisher, or engraver of precious stones usually other than diamonds
2 : the art of cutting gems
After the death of my wife I discovered that I was boring. She probably kept this fact hidden from me during our 30 year marriage out of kindness. Suddenly on my own, I was confronted with the problem of spending more time with myself than I was used to. It happened at 3pm on a Wednesday. After finishing the crossword, the soduku, the word find puzzle and that game for children where you try to find the five differences between the two seemingly identical scenes when it struck me. I was boring, and if I was to spend another minute with myself I might well go crazy. Also, I was only able to find four differences and was dangerously close to setting the newspaper on fire.
My daughter told me I needed a hobby. "Something to keep you busy", she said in what I was sure was the same tone she used with her own children when they were bothering her. Still, this was the only idea I had at my disposal. I would, I decided, find myself a hobby.
Unsure how to get started, I went to the bookstore and found a section labeled, helpfully, "Hobbies". I had never known how many useless pursuits there were and for a moment considered going home, having a tea, and trying out "napping" as a hobby. I persevered. After a half hour of browsing, I chose a book about gardening and took it home.
I learned over one week of planting, weeding, and dirt under my fingernails, that I was a useless gardener.
I returned to the bookstore despondent. Perhaps I needed an indoor activity. Gardening involved far too much time in the sun, on your hands and knees. Also, slugs. This time I spent more time selecting, it would not do to fail again so spectacularly. After much consideration, "drawing" seemed harmless enough.
My daughter came by during this week and saw my drawings. Her reaction was some sound I was unfamiliar with, but her words of encouragement sounded very much like her praise for the fingerpaintings her 5 year old has pinned on their refrigerator. I knew the drawings were poor of course, but I also knew that unlike my grandson, I had had very little fun making them.
Over some months I made my way through learning chess, playing the harmonica, model ships, and even stamp collecting. I began to despair for my ability to enjoy just about anything. I was about to pay for a book about origami when the young woman at the counter smiled and said to me, "My father used to polish stones". I was momentarily baffled and could not understand why anyone would want to do such I thing. This probably showed on my face, she added "he found it very relaxing I suppose".
I tried to imagine myself polishing stones. When I thought about it it was no less absurd than any of my other attempts over the past several months. "I haven't seen any books on that" I said.
"We could order one" she offered with a bigger smile, adding "you remind me of him." somewhat more quietly. It seemed rude then to not agree to this.
The book came in a week later, well after I had grown tired of folding paper into obscene approximations of animal shapes. The polishing of stones, of course, required additional equipment which I rounded up at a hobby shop, the proprietor of which I'm sure was growing tired of me. I started in on my stones the next day.
It is hard to know, I suppose, what types of activities may interest a person by merely looking at them. However, the young woman from the bookstore clearly saw something in my face that said "stone polisher". The motions soothed me, the stones, once polished, were cool and smooth in my hands. While in the midst of my new hobby, I found that I was, perhaps, enjoying myself a little.
I am still boring. No one would call stone polishing titillating entertainment. The days seem less long though, and sometimes I even feel as if I may not be lonely.
poetaster - \POH-uh-tass-ter\
Noun:
An inferior poet
His class schedule is a mix of literature and writing theory. He does not care to actually attend, preferring instead to haunt the campus coffee shop, drinking espressos and writing on his notecards in an illegible scrawl.
He never capitalizes his letters, a trick learned from e.e. cummings.
He and his friends discuss the merits of free verse and disparage the use of rhyme and meter in any fashion. He carries a copy of "Howl" with him everywhere he goes and owns a vintage typewriter he found at an estate sale.
He once heard that Tolstoy's wife transcribed his work for him. He decides that this would be ideal, but his relationships tend to be over too quickly for him to introduce this idea. He types up his poems himself bemoaning his misfortune. After receiving rejection letters he sulks at the nearest bar. Someone told him that Bukowski favored Reisling and he follows along, getting drunk on sweet German wine.
His GPA drops steadily. He burns rejection letters in his trash can. He learns to smoke the pipe and tries hash. He writes all night, but can not read the writing the next day.
Sometimes, after three espressos and ten notecards, he wonders about switching majors. Being a writer, he is finding, is more work than he had anticipated.
Theology, surely, would require less dedication.
autochthonous - \aw-TAHK-thuh-nus\
Adjective:
1 indigenous, native
2 formed or originating in the place where found
There were others they allowed to enjoy the glade of course. Bumble bees that passed through on a trade route. Never staying long, merely taking a bit of their wares and going forth. There were sometimes ants and spiders that made temporary homes in the shade of the trees. It was peaceful, and the community thrived.
The change comes gradually at first. A haunting presence just out of sight in the deeper, darker tangle of the forest surrounding the glade. There were murmurs through the community. Whispers about the presence, worried shifting of leaves that might have been mistaken for effects of a gentle breeze. Everyone turns their faces to the tree line and watches. For several long days there is no change other than the unusual absence of the bumble bees passing through.
It is agreed that this is unnerving.
They are shaking the morning dew from their petals when they see the treacherous and eerily still vines tumbling out from the forest and stretching their first shadowy fingers into the glade. The vines are a deep and dangerous green that verges on black and their origin is hidden in the depths of the trees. The community erupts in a panic.
Petals trembling, leaves stretching and reaching for something, anything. No one can fly, like the bees, or crawl like the ants. They are left only to stand and wait, eyeing the vines with trepidation.
It is two days later that they lose their first member. He had grown at the outer edges of the community, and when the sun breaks, the vines twist and curl in the place he used to be. The panic grows.
It seems to come on faster now. Those on the far side of the glade who until now only heard rumors can now see the crushing vines weaving tendrils through their friends, their family. Those that are left feel as if they can actually see the vines growing.
When there are only a few of them left shaking and alone in the now darkened glade silence wins out. A sense of resignation and despair causes their leaves to droop and wilt. The morning dew lingers.
On the last day, only one remains. She turns her face to the sky and watches a distant insect turn circles overhead. In stages it descends, one solitary bumble bee stumbling lower and lower. As she feels the vines begin to twist around her it lands heavily on her petals. One last trader, passing through. She wishes to give him everything she has left. The bee, as bees do, takes what is needed and with a tired push launches up and away. She watches his lopsided flight as the vines finally take over and nothing remains.
The bee flies on, small drops of pollen falling from time to time, to mark its path.
chary - \CHAIR-ee\
Adjective:
1 a : discreetly cautious: as * b : hesitant and vigilant about dangers and risks c : slow to grant, accept, or expend
He's read a lot of stories about burglaries and break ins. A friend of a friend's cousin's apartment was broken into once. They stole everything leaving only some broken dishes and an ashtray. So the story went anyway.
Each Monday at promptly 7pm he checks the batteries in the smoke detectors. They recommend you do this once a month. Jerry prefers more diligence than that.
He likes his life well ordered, which is what he explains to Sadie. Sadie who spilled coffee on him at the cafe. Sadie who always forgets to lock her door when she leaves. Sadie who leaves the windows down on her Honda, even when it looks like rain.
He finds her maddening.
He asks her out for dinner. Then a movie. Then over to his apartment.
Weeks later, he finds himself forgetting to check the smoke detector batteries. Instead he is on the couch, watching Sadie paint her toenails. He thinks that maybe they should do that in a room with more ventilation. The thought comes and goes without stopping to stay however.
One day he comes home and finds that he only locked three out of the five locks.
Sadie merely laughs at him. He finds he isn't even terribly bothered.
winkle - \WINK-ul\
Verb:
1 : chiefly British : to displace, remove, or evict from a position -- usually used with out
2 : chiefly British : to obtain or draw out by effort -- usually used with out
Jake manages to mostly fix the leaky roof and only comes frighteningly close to death once. Maybe twice. Mary gets used to the uneven temperatures spouted out by their aged oven. She decides she likes that the pancakes are always runny in the middle no matter what.
One night, curled together on their futon, they hear a scratching sound. It wakes Mary from a pleasant dream about open fields and sunshine. She elbows Jake in the side. Together they listen to the scratching in the dark, tracking it as it shifts around beneath them.
"Something is under the house" Jake says.
"Trapped probably" Mary agrees.
She rests her head on his chest and they continue to listen.
"I'll look in the morning" he promises.
In the daylight, he wears his oldest and worst pair of jeans, a long sleeve shirt and heavy work gloves. In his hand is a flashlight. He crouches by the opening to the crawl space and shines the light into darkness. Mary leans over his shoulder and together, they stare at the vast emptiness that is under the house. Jake thinks he may hear something moving around. He swallows, nods his head firmly, and gets on all fours to enter this new domain.
It does not take long for him to find it. The beam from his flashlight catches the small animal's eyes and they flash back at him a brilliant green. The mysterious scratches were coming from this tiny, pitiful looking kitten. He stares for awhile, before reaching out one gloved hand and making a soft, clicking noise with his tongue. The kitten stares back, and then dashes away.
This will be difficult, he thinks.
Outside they hatch a plan. Mary retrieves a can of tuna from inside, and they place the open container just inside the opening of the crawl space. Together, they lay by the opening and watch.
In the end it takes four cans of tuna before they are able to coax the kitten out into the daylight. Thoroughly sated, and becoming more comfortable, the kitten even deigns to allow Jake to scratch the top of his head, lightly. During the distraction, Mary replaces the covering to the crawl space.
Success.
It's still days later, after they have left water and cat food out on their porch every morning, that the kitten scratches at the door the first time. Mary smiles softly as she opens it, and tentatively, the kitten enters their house and never leaves.
At dinner that night, Jake feeds the kitten scraps from his plate and it feels somehow that things are complete.
abdicate - \AB-dih-kayt\
Verb:
1 : to cast off : discard
2 : to relinquish (as sovereign power) formally
3 : to renounce a throne, high office, dignity, or function
So his life has always been and so he has found himself here today. He owns a vast empire. His company employs more people than he can even envision. The stock prices are drool worthy. The board of directors are fat and decidedly happy. At least they were.
It has not been easy. He has made severe sacrifices. Two women have left him. One child refuses to speak to him. Still, he has succeeded, and for as long as he can remember this is what has mattered.
This room though is stifling hot. The table he sits at is polished to a high shine. There is a microphone in front of him and a panel of people asking questions. He is sweating which feels undignified. He knows the answers to every question, but the answers can't be admitted to. He made sacrifices for his success and it has led him here.
Later he will walk out of this room and cameras will flash in his eyes. He will admit to nothing.
He has a plan of course, he always does. In his briefcase inside a copy of "The Art of War" is a plane ticket and his passport. He has a separate account with a healthy balance in a sunny climate he has not told anyone about. Tomorrow he will be thousands of miles away from this room and these disappointed faces.
It is, he thinks, about time to fail and to quit.
macerate - \MASS-uh-rayt\
Verb:
1 : to cause to waste away by or as if by excessive fasting
2 : to cause to become soft or separated into constituent elements by or as if by steeping in fluid; broadly : steep, soak
3 : to soften and wear away especially as a result of being wetted or steeped
Thus torturing the slugs became a new kind of game.
They discovered the brutal effects of salt. Someone brought a magnifying glass and they learned to focus the heat of the sun to boil slugs that found themselves already half baking on the sidewalk. Some of the children turned these experiments into competitions. The reigning king of their play was whoever had lately concocted the most grievous punishment on the slugs.
Then they imprisoned the slugs. Two of them. One, slight and brown. The other, more bulbous and a softish orange in color. The children trapped them in a shoebox with holes poked in the lid. There was nothing else in the box.
They keep the box hidden in the bushes behind someone's house. Every morning, mid afternoon and early evening before running for dinner, they peek into the box to see what the slugs are doing. The first few days, nothing seems to change. The slugs traverse the bottom and sides of the box, leaving trails of slug slime in their wake. The whole box takes on a certain texture after awhile.
Then the slugs turn on each other. One day after returning from lunch at their houses the children open the box to see that the small brown slug seems smaller, slower somehow. His eye stalks retracted. The orange slug seems improved, replenished. The children discuss the possibilities, but there is only one explanation.
Orange is eating brown.
The reactions to this knowledge vary. Some of the children are newly fascinated. The experiment had grown dull, but this threw a new an exciting light on the plight of their slugs. They wondered how long it would take for orange to devour the entirety of brown. They wondered if orange was clever enough to keep brown alive as long as possible, as a constant food source. They wondered how long it could last.
The others were wary. Slugs had never seemed like real animals before. More like animated blobs that exploded or squished in unusual ways. Now it was clear, slugs may well be evil. At the very least, slugs were cannibals. They retreated to the monkey bars, no longer wanting anything to do with the game.
It only takes a week for the experiment to end. Eventually orange does devour the entirety of brown, and after that he wastes away on his own. Starved. The children leave the box where it is and return to other games. They fashion guns from sticks and chase each other through the woods. They build a makeshift tree house. They call it the prison.