From Under a Hot Pink Umbrella

Originally I posted this on my blog about living in Japan, but since I think it fits a little better here.  I was just so excited to be writing again!  You can see the influence of living in Osaka during the rainy season, though.  I never really thought about the social interactions that can happen under an umbrella before.


From Under a Hot Pink Umbrella

The rain was lighter now, a gentle tapping on his umbrella, like a woman’s fingers on a tsuzumi, with the occasional loud pom of a tsuri daiko as collected rain dropped down from the trees.  His shoes were soaked and his toes were starting to feel stiff with cold.  But somehow, they were still not leading him home.

It was a rare fall rainstorm.  He had been caught off guard.  Forced to buy an umbrella at the convenient sore, he was stuck with a hot pink one.  He smiled as he thought of how this must look to the squirrels and birds waiting out the storm in the branches above – a man in a charcoal suit, with a burgundy tie, and a hot pink umbrella.

The parks was no on his usual route home.  In fact, it was in the opposite direction.  Was it the patter patter of the rain on the umbrella or the vibrant colors brought out by the rain that had led him down a different path this evening?  Did it really matter?

He sat down on a bench.  He shivered as the rain soaked into his pants.  After the long, stifling summer it was a welcome sensation to be chilled.  The thought of a cold crossed his mind, but was quickly dismissed as a problem for tomorrow. 

           

He looked out at the park from under his hot pink umbrella.  The shelter added a warm glow to everything.  Through the curtain of rain, the park seemed more alive than on any sunny day.  The greens, what was left of them, were vibrant as the first blades of grass in spring.  The path glistened inky black as if it were liquid rather than asphalt.  The first red leaves burned among their green brethren.

He curled his toes in his shoes, trying to warm them.  It would be time to go soon.  It was already noticeably darker.  There was a little less sparkle and the further trees were harder to see.

With a grunt, he pushed himself up from the bench.  The wet spot on his pants, which had begun to warm, was suddenly icy cold.  He gasped a little in surprise.

Maybe he would stop for a hot coffee on the way home.

***

She sniffed and rubbed her nose across the back of her hand.  Wet strands of hair clung to her face.

If it had been summer, she would not have minded forgetting her umbrella at home that morning.  But it was fall and the rain was cold.  It was refreshing, but she would rather experience it from the protection of an umbrella.  Or at least a more waterproof jacket.

She pulled the flaps of her father’s old pea coat tighter around herself.  The smell of wet wool reminded her of weekends spent at the shore.  She smiled.

Across the park she noticed a man in a dark suit sitting under a hot pink umbrella.  He was staring up into the leaves, his mind far away.  She glanced up to see what he could be so interested in. 

A large drop of water hit her square in the left eye.  She flinched.

Smiling at the man who had still not seen her, she continued through the park toward home.

***

They stood at the corner, waiting for the signal to cross. 

They shivered as the rain began to fall harder. 

“Excuse me,” he said, holding the hot pink umbrella toward her.

“Oh no, I’m fine,” she replied.  “I’m already soaked through.”

           

“Please.  It’s getting cold.”

“But your suit.”

He smiled, small wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes betraying his age.  “It’s too late for me too.”

“I really couldn’t.”

“What if we shared?”

It was an interesting proposition.  In this city, one never got too close to strangers.  Even in crowded subway cars, when contact was necessary, people managed to keep a micro thin layer of personal space.

His smile tempted her.  But as the rain picked up to a steady downpour, she was compelled to take a small step toward him, into the strange pink light under the umbrella.

The sound of rain on the umbrella was a dull roar, like a speaker blasting white noise after the record has been removed but the ac is still on.  The smell of wet wool filled the small shelter.

The signal changed.  Without thinking, she took his arm as they crossed the street.

After a block, the rain began to taper off.  They did not break away from each other, though.  They had become accustomed to the slight warmth of their contact.  Night had come.  The street lights flickered to life.  They continued down the glistening street, under the warm glow of the hot pink umbrella.

Resurrection

Not a soul haunted the high street at that ungodly hour.  Fog, heavy with the smell of the sea, dripped from the buildings and made the cobbles slick and dangerous.  A lamp flickered in the gloom.  Two shadows emerged from the close, dragging a heavy burden between them.  They paused, the clouds of their ragged breath blending with the fog on that cold night.  They listened.

A skirl of pipes, accompanied by drunken singing, floated up from the World’s End.  Nothing close, no one would be out on a night like this.  Their breathing had returned to normal.  The shadows hefted the burden between them and continued on their wicked errand.

The young man paced the length of his shabby flat, a ragged nail clenched between his teeth.  His heart raced at every sound from the street below.  His other hand fingered the payment in his pocket.  A good sum, to be sure, but was it enough to buy someone’s soul?

A colleague had put him in touch with the Resurrectionists.  It had been a simple business transaction - conducted over a pint, in a pub full of unknowing witnesses.  As he hurried from the meeting, he imagined some of the patrons watching him, watching the horns sprout from his head. 

The table was cleared and spread with a cheap wool cloth.  Under the cloth, newspaper had been piled to soak up any excess fluids.  More newspaper covered the floor.  He had borrowed lanterns from his neighbors and positioned them at all corners of the table.  Candles filled every surface.  He would need as much light as possible.  But not yet.  Once the body was delivered, he would light the candles.  Not before.

He chewed at the fingernail, the moral dilemma raging in his head.  He meant to be a doctor.  It had been his dream since he was a little boy.  He had come to Edinburgh to study medicine at the finest school in the world.  His professors were some of the brightest minds in medicine.  But there were too many students and not enough bodies.  After two years he had only been three feet from a cadaver. 

He had ideas, cures that were sure to help hundreds, if he could just get his hands on a body.    Desperate, he had sought out the Resurrectionists. 

As the hour of delivery approached, however, his heart began to waiver.  It was someone’s father, brother, husband that the Resurrectionists brought to him tonight.  Even worse – it could be a young mother.  Who was he to pull this poor soul from their eternal rest just to test a theory?  A theory that might save hundreds of souls, he told himself.  What knowledge he could gleen from this one wretch could save lives.  Was that not enough to earn the mercy of the Heavenly Father?  He struggled to convince himself it was.  His motives were pure, he worked for the betterment of mankind – God’s children.  It was far more damning if he just sat by and watched them suffer when he knew he could help.  One body, one soul, was not too much to ask. 

Shoes scraped on the cobbles below.  Someone was coming.  There was the sound of people on the stairs.

The young man held his breath. 

There was a sharp rap on the door.  Hell or no, he had come too far.  He opened the door.

The smell of damp earth, whisky, and death follow the Resurrection Men into the apartment. 

“Doctor,” the taller man said.

The doctor inclined his head, his voice had failed him.

“Should we throw him on the table?”

“Yes,” the doctor whispered.

They dropped the shrouded corpse onto the floor next to the table and began to uncover it.  “Bring one of them candles closer so you can inspect the merchandise.”

The young doctor did as he was told.  He should not allow these men to speak to him that way, but he was too frightened to refuse. 

“You got the money,” the shorter of the pair asked.

“I must see how fresh it is,” the doctor replied.

“Just put him in the ground this morning,” the tall man said grabbing the corpse by the shoulders and hauling him onto the table. 

Taking a breath, the doctor stepped toward his patient.  The time for doubt and God were past, Science must rule him now.  It was a young man.  Maybe a little older than the doctor himself.  The candle light shone on the youth’s pale face.  It is a familiar face.  A face the doctor has not seen in many years, but he knew this man.  They had grown up together, gone to school together.  They had been friends.

“What’s the matter doc, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” the taller man joked. Their barking laughter ripped through the quite apartment. 

“Get out,” the doctor said, pushing them toward the door.  He shoved the payment into their open hands before they could even protest and slammed the door in their faces. 

Alone again, he stared at the body on the table.  This body, this soul, was it too much to ask?

His hands shaking, he lit the lanterns at the corners of the table.  God forgive him.  In the morning he would pray, but now there was work to be done.

On a Case of Pathless Anxiety

42:00:00:00
In just forty-two days, you will be a college graduate. Only 10,008 hours, 60,480 minutos, 3,628,800 seconds, and you will walk across the stage in front of your family and friends. You will flick the blue and red tassel from right to left, a metaphorical windshield wiper clearing away the detritus of the majority of your life. For the first time in twenty-two years, you will not be a student. You will have a degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Linguistics y un otra en Espanol. But what is that worth when the price is your identity?

37:18:22:42
You could have applied for grad school, clung to the title Student a little longer, put off the inevitable for four, maybe five, more years. But in the end you’re right back here, unsure – afraid – of what is waiting on the other side of the stage.
You couldn’t afford it anyway. Your student loans are already enough to buy a good-sized mansion. It is a conundrum; go out and work, pay down the debt, or take on more. you can’t afford more debt, Mastercard just turned me down, the Experian report would only be considered reasonable if it were out of 100. But when you have the credit score, when the banks won’t laugh me right back out the door, will they let you back in? A Catch 22, poor Yossarrian.

25:22:42:16
Mom offered to let me come home. Just until you get it all sorted out. You almost believed that Bon Jovi song. But no, you can’t go home. Dad’s already called the contractor about his new home theater.
Twenty-five days. Your toes grip the edge of the precipice of graduation, fighting the forces behind me. Look down. It’s a long-ass way to fall.

20:15:44:20
You had a teacher your junior year. She taught you how to curse in Espanol. Mierda. It’s not like when you learned them in English. When Dylan’s dad said a palabra sucia at his sixth birthday party. It was a sleepover and someone – John Thomas – had decided having a soda fight would be a great idea. No, now you are an adult, you can learn dirty words in class. You are an adult, right? Nine days until you find out.

14:21:17:19
What about your dreams? Will the world destroy them? Stomp on them like the playground bully? Will you be left a broken shell, more child than man? Empty pockets, a brain full of useless knowledge? You should never start a story with dialogue, unless you like staring a story with dialogue. An allomorph is one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments. Me llamo Andrew. Donde es el bano? Show, don’t tell, except when it is acceptable to tell. In English, verb+ed results in past tense. Ditto with plurals. Except there are always exceptions should you choose to accept them. Buenos dias señorita. Tengo un gato en mis pantalones. Quoth the raven, nevermore.

9:42:01:00
You want to be a writer when you grow up. When you grow up. When will that be? Did you miss it already? Like elementary school. You know it happened, tu madre has lost fotos to prove it. Pero, no se, you don’t remember. Was there a moment, a single frame in the motion picture of your life, when suddenly you were a grown up? You have changed a lot in these cuatro anos, si, enfolded in the hallowed, ivy-clad walls. But did you really grow up? Are you now – gasp – an adult? Does the world judge you capable of taking care of yourself? In the eyes of the law you have been an adult for many years, but what about your eyes? Too late. Nothing gold can stay. Time to sink or swim. The real world is coming. Ay dios mio!

7:01:42:06
Every college should require classes on being an adult. But there were no lectures on investing wisely. No prof pulled you aside and told you how much things will really cost. And that the world will take American Express, but it prefers payment in time and souls. There was no average annual income pie chart illustrating how much of your hard earned denero will be sucked away by los bastardos a las utility company. Countless classes you could take but there was never one on how to survive after you leave the comfy shelter of campus. You played blissfully in an isolated Eden, spared the daily terror of the ‘real world.’ It awaits you, biding its time. But in just seven days…
Life 101, graduate requirement por todos estudiantes. “Welcome to the world me muchacho pequeño. She’s a bitch. But we will do our best to help you navigate the turbulent agua o adulthood. We will walk you through the problems of insurance and Big Brother. Give you insider secrets about the corporate pit bulls waiting to suck out your souls and deposit them in the cubical Hades of 9-5. If you’re lucky. Abandon all hop ye who pass thorough these emblemed doors! You will leave these peaceful halls with a confident/competent stride as you skip down the fools’ gold road of life.” No Universidad de conocimiento should shove its students across the graduation stage without it.

1:03:37:42
The night before graduation you realize that your life’s dream es un sham. The pointless pipe dream of an unambitious slacker. Un novelist, por dios. There hasn’t been any thing original since the Greeks. Not even them. Shakespeare got close, but the ever elusive original plot slipped through his ink-stained fingers time and again. Every story has been told and retold through so many colored lenses that only the dimmest light finds its’ way through anymore. You can attempt to create something original, but you will only come up with a life story. Or a love story, which is, in fact, just a twist on the life story. Es no possible, señor. Lo siento. The entire literary/story telling history of the world is just an elaborate rehashing of the same story, over and over again, until we believe we have stumbled on something shiny and nuevo. How simple our little minds must be. My Bog have mercy on our ignorant soles.

00:00: 25:07
Un dia de reckoning es aqui. The cheap, red polyester sticks to your damp neck. So the red and blue tassel will migrate across your forehead, cutting the carotid artery of your simple life in its relocation . Your worth will no longer be evaluated on a scale of 0-100; gpa doesn’t exist in the real world. No more sylibi, no more cram sessions, no more student discounts. No more excuses. There is no longer winter and summer break. Life is 24/7, 365.
The fat person smell, that semi-sweet mixture of cake and b.o., wafts over from the muchacha next to you. She is smiling. Mi Dios, such beautiful idiocy. Maybe she has a plan, a job lined up in Daddy’s company; maybe she doesn’t belief the real world is waiting, just licking its lips on the other side of the stage, to swallow her up like the ravenous Cerberus it is. Its teeth tearing her childish dreams to bloody ribbons as it gluts itself on the smorgasbord of new grads. All of this – the time, the money, the effort – for a putrid piece of animal skin. A useless condom to frame so you can point to it one day and say, “Si, I did it.” A brief, shining moment of self admiration. Drink it in, savor it, it will be the last time. The apocalypse inches closer. Closer. Done with the K’, on to the L’s. You turn, searching for desperate comfort in the puertas of the auditorium. They recede, stretching into the distance. You can’t flee back into the safe arms of undergraduatehood. M’s. Uno mas!

0:00:00:00
“Andrew Michael MacLeod.”
The horror, the horror.

Stage Fright

Standing before them, I feel naked.
Unseen eyes bore into my flesh like weevils.
The flames of embarrassment leap around me
As I stand,
Lashed to an imaginary stake,
At center stage.
I can feel the heat rising through my body.
Burning my chest,
My throat,
My cheeks.
In the black abyss of the audience, someone giggles.
My stomach flies into my mouth,
Desperate to escape the heat of the foot lights.
I open the gate of my clenched teeth to let it escape.
My line tumbles out,
Sticky with the saliva of fear.
Then relief,
A deep breath.

The show must go on.

Self Reflections

The best laid plans of mice and men,
Oft’ go astray.
Many days, I wake to find
Life getting in the way
Of my goals, my dreams, my grand design,
Of simple plans for today.
Or could it be,
That it is me
Who is standing in my way?

Horizons

Jessica sat on the worn, wooden steps of her father’s farmhouse watching the weak November sun as it struggled to burn off the morning fog. She pulled the patchwork quilt tighter around her shoulders. It still smelled of him; sweat and cigarette smoke, sun and dust. It was hard to believe Daddy was gone.

She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears. She waited, without daring to breathe, to hear him in the kitchen, his heavy work boots thudding down the hall, curses as he spilled coffee trying to open the screen door. But there was nothing. Just the cooing of doves somewhere in the mist.

The sun began to win its battle with the fog as she gazed blindly over the yard. She could make out Daddy’s old pickup. Soon the barn and John Deere parked out front solidified a little further away. Slowly the fog retreated to reveal the bleak West Texas landscape. Jessica shivered as the miles of ironed-flat land stretched out before her. She had never been comfortable with so much horizon. Driving through a place like this made you feel like you were crawling. Living in it was even slower. There was nothing to break it, nothing to race toward.

The day she left for college in Austin, where there were too many trees and skyscrapers to see the horizon, she had asked Daddy why he had stayed, after Mama left and Grandpa died, how he kept sane with so much space. He had squinted out over the cotton fields, the way he always did when he wasn’t sure how to answer. But then he had looked up into the cloudless blue sky and smiled just a little. “Living out here, it makes you realize how small you really are. That this world ain’t really about you, you just live in it for a time. It keeps you honest with yourself.”

She hadn’t understood what he meant. She was standing in front of her Civic, her entire life jammed into the trunk. They had both been crying. Had both said a lot of things that only made sense at that moment of separation. But as she sat on the cold porch steps years later, huddled in a moth-eaten quilt, thinking about his coffin as it was lowered into the ground, she knew that he was right.

Sunrise Over an Australian Beach

Velvet ebony
To the color of wet steel
Dyed indigo.
A shy hint of violet
Blossoming to rose.
Gold spreading over the waves.
Dawn.