extract

cobsie

just thought I'd throw an extract of my new story up here...as usual, it's a sort of low-affect slacker affair...


pretty close


On Earl’s third day at the motel, two girls arrived at the pool and set up on the same side as him, seven or eight sun-loungers away. The afternoon sun was strong and the pool faced south into a peeling stucco wall, beyond which were some palm trees and beyond those, the traffic on Calle Ocho heading downtown to Miami.

The girls dragged their sun-loungers closer to each other and sat patting the thin canvas coverings, brushing dust away. The girl with her back to Earl had short brown hair and long skinny limbs and he could see, or sense, wing-like shoulder blades under her t-shirt. The other girl was curvier, with long black hair and a red halter-neck and Jackie O glasses keeping her bangs up. She reached into a brightly checked tote-bag for lotion. The short haired girl stepped on the heels of her sneakers to prise them off.

Earl held up a hand to shade his eyes, palm out in loose salute. So far, all he had done in Miami was hang out at the motel, drinking and reading and listening to music, thinking he should go out, but never going. The day before, he fell into bed shirtless and flushed and drunk at four in the afternoon, laughing at his own jokes. He snapped awake hours later in the warm dark with a cramp in his calf. He picked up hot wings from the bar and watched David Letterman in his room. With the windows open he thought he could smell the ocean, faintly.

He got up from his sun-lounger and walked over to the edge of the pool, feeling the girls’ attention on him although they didn’t turn their heads. He bounced on the balls of his feet in a testing way, then pogoed high over the water, arms and legs tight against his body. The force of the plunge pulled his arms from his sides. He pushed hard off the bottom and torpedoed to the surface, rising waist high in a burst of flashing drops. The water was not as warm as he expected.

He let his feet sink to the bottom. He had to go see his father. Today, for sure. He had to walk into his father’s bar, just rock up to the bar out of the clear blue and say hey, Dad! Long time, long time. Today, no bullsht. He waded to the ladder and hauled himself out. His feet slapped the concrete. He perched on the edge of his sun-lounger, staring into the air a few feet ahead. He raised his thumb to his mouth and worked a strip of cuticle between his teeth, unconsciously, frowning.

The girls were debating something. The dark-haired girl was cajoling. “Oh come on. I’ll do it. Seriously! I’ll do it. Let me.” The short-haired girl murmured dissent, spreading her hands to keep her friend seated. “Don’t! Don’t-don’t-don’t!”

Earl pulled on his t-shirt as the dark-haired girl approached and waited for her to reach him. She stopped one sun-lounger away, knocked her knuckles on the metal headrest and smiled.

“Hey there.”

“Hey.”

“My friend and I are about to make cocktails and we were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

“Cocktails?”

She had a mild Southern accent, educated back East. “Sure. Highballs. I’m on my way to get ice.”

Earl nodded, catching hold of the idea. “Okay. That sounds good. Why not?” He stood, smiling and grateful. “I’ll get the ice.”

The girls were sitting side by side on the same sun-lounger when Earl joined them. The short-haired girl nodded hello. She was paler than her friend, with light brown hair in a sleek cap that was both boyish and girlish.

“I’m Lora,” she said. “That’s Gatsby.”

The dark-haired girl passed him a colored plastic glass. “As in the Great.”

“Great name.”

“My dumb dad. I don’t think he ever read it.”

“Because Gatsby’s a man?”

“And a gangster and he ends up shot dead in his swimming pool. I swear I was traumatized when I first read it and I was like, Dad! What were you thinking? And he was like, Gatsby was living the dream! He was a great American!” She rolled her eyes and began rooting in the tote bag. “Okay, let’s see what we have here.” Her skin was smoothly tanned and Earl could smell the coconutty lotion, which he liked.

They had Jack Daniels, ginger ale, club soda, a lemon-shaped lemon juice and packets of white sugar and coffee stirrers taken from a McDonald’s. Lora used the cap of the Jack Daniels to measure the whiskey, four into each glass.

“Highball is just whiskey and ginger ale,” said Gatsby, rattling her ice cubes. “Simple and classic.”

“Highball. You’re such a belle, Gatsby. I’m making whiskey sour,” said Lora, reaching for the lemon. She crossed her legs under her and balanced the glass in the x of her thighs.

“There’s old fashioneds,” said Earl. “That’s whiskey and soda. Or there’s one with whiskey and soda and ginger ale, very classy.” He snapped his fingers. He couldn’t think of the name. It flashed into his mind that his father, a barman, would know. He was three blocks away.

The girls were from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Earl told them he had flown in from Boston the night before, reluctant at the last moment to admit to two days of nothing. He told them he was a printmaker, not a waiter. He said he was in a band, but not that the band broke up. Gatsby was a paralegal. She was thinking about law school. Lora was an administrator at UNC. She liked it okay, but was really there to audit classes in fine art and photography. She wanted to be a photographer, or maybe design websites. They knocked back their drinks, all of them eager to get to the next one, to find their buzz. Lora was from upstate New York originally. Gatsby was from Atlanta.

Earl decided on a highball, letting the whiskey spill over the cap with each measure. He took a mouthful neat and felt the heat of it rise through his chest, behind his eyes. He listened and nodded, letting the expansive good humor that began every bender spread inside him.

The Mad Hatter

Hi Cobsie. Another very well-written story here. It's interesting to watch Earl as his meager motivation slips away from him. The characters are well-drawn in the short space, and I loved the revelation of Gatsby's name.

If I was to suggest a flaw, it's that you sometimes tell us too much. Do you need to state, for instance, that Earl's dad is a barman? I think it's enough to know that he'd know what the name of the cocktail is, and you've already mentioned walking into his father's bar. Likewise, I think you can use language to tell us he's lying near the end, without actually saying it explicitly. We already know that he has been at the motel for three days, so you could just say "He told them he had flown in from Boston the night before. He told them he was a printmaker, and that he was in a band." I think the first sentence clues us in to the fact that he's not being honest, so there's no need to labour the point.

I also had a bit of trouble on my first read remembering which girl was which at the beginning. Describing them both by their hair got a bit confusing (for me), so you might have been better off saying "the dark-haired one" and "the skinny one", for instance.

But as usual with your stories, that's really just detail work. The atmosphere of the story - the stillness - is great. There's lovely attention to detail in things like the dusty chairs and the sense of Lora's shoulder blades. It seems self-contained, but I wonder - is it part of a longer story again?

cobsie

Thanks for reading and commenting - very insightful! Yes, I'm spelling out too much, I will have to work to take off those rough edges. And yes - my first instinct was to call her 'the skinny girl' and then I thought, is that an unappealing way of referring to her? but it's more natural, a better way of differentiating between the two girls. So, I'll go back to that.

This is a first draft - just the opening couple of pages of a story I haven't even finished yet. I broke my own rule of not soliciting opinions on unfinished stuff - I just wanted to get a sense of how it was coming across.

Thanks again for the really useful notes.

The Mad Hatter

cobsie wrote: »

Thanks for reading and commenting - very insightful! Yes, I'm spelling out too much, I will have to work to take off those rough edges. And yes - my first instinct was to call her 'the skinny girl' and then I thought, is that an unappealing way of referring to her? but it's more natural, a better way of differentiating between the two girls. So, I'll go back to that.

This is a first draft - just the opening couple of pages of a story I haven't even finished yet. I broke my own rule of not soliciting opinions on unfinished stuff - I just wanted to get a sense of how it was coming across.

Thanks again for the really useful notes.

You're very welcome:)

I admit the description of the girls reminded me a bit of John Updike's A&P, which I may have been thinking of when I suggested that change.

cobsie

I absolutely ADORE that story! To be in any way reminiscent of it is very flattering!

I wasn't thinking of it (A&P) but I am thinking of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Carver. Except, the further into the story I write, the more it is quite clearly an anti-WWTAWWTAL. In theme, at least. The structure I pretty much lifted wholesale (it's an homage ).