FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Right, Susie’s in the same area, right nearby, and also Lawrence, and the Scaralettos have a place across the way, and Alan is there, which I know for sure, because we’ve seen each other a bunch of times, the first was right after we moved in, I think we were still in boxes, and there was a terrible storm and he sent one of his guys over to make sure that we were okay and didn’t need help with a felled tree or something, turns out that he took care of securing the power lines himself, footed the bill, I know that he wanted to watch the game but still, to do something that was as beneficial for others, well, you have to give the guy credit, and he’s always been very friendly if we were out driving and saw him walking or vice-versa, was never without a wave and a smile, sometimes he would even tilt his head like in one of his movies and whoever was in the car with us or walking with us would just crack up, yeah, he had a way of both being famous and not being famous, of both being rich and not being rich, shocking what happened to his wife, I can’t bear to watch the trial, no, I don’t believe for a second that he did it.

 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

WINTON'S WRAITH

Everything about the house was normal, which, Eric knew, meant that one thing would have to be out of the ordinary, and probably extremely so. That was just how it went. Appearances were deceiving. Surfaces were not uniform. Every day was not like a holiday. Eric lagged a few steps behind his parents, who were oohing and aahing at what his mother liked to call “features”: a large closet, an additional drink refrigerator, touchpads to turn off lights. “So there is no fumbling for a switch,” hie father said. None of these features were anything but normal. Eric had seen them so many other houses that he hardly saw them in this one. Eric had fallen behind his parents. He turned left upstairs despite knowing they had turned right. And then, suddenly, he saw it, right in front of him, a ghost with white hair waving like seagrass. Was this Arthur Winton, who had built the house that once stood on this site, the house that had been torn down in the nineties despite pressure from historic preservation types? Eric had read about it in the newspaper though when he had tried to tell his parents about it his father had waved him off and his mother had said something about how the past did not have enough features. She was wrong. Here was one of those features, hovering in a hallway, white hair waving. And then the figure spoke: “I mean to kill someone,” it said. Eric nodded. He somehow knew that nodding was the proper response. “Not now,” said the ghost. “But one day. When all of you are settled, when the outcome is not expected.” Eric nodded again. “For now,” the ghost said, “I will show you the rest of the floor.” Eric nodded a third time and held out his hand, where it was greeted by a icy sensation. “The guest bedroom,” said the ghost, “has a television built into the cabinet. Apply pressure here, along the front edge, and up it will come.” Eric applied pressure, heard a whir, and waited as the TV rose like a morning sun. “A thousand channels,” said Winton’s wraith, temporarily proud, for the moment not thinking about the murder to come.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

BY THIS ARRIVED OLIVIA

Allen spent ample time sifting until he found the box and, written in a cowl in his personal hand, her name. He had not for years spoken to her but once she had been important to him. That morning he had been at home, laboring, bearing in mind his new wife walking around in a summer season gown. It was a newlywed time. Each thought the other unparalleled. If he had a gap in his pants, she would not inform him. “I don’t know what I am doing,” she could say and he would just sit all around running a finger.

But then in the afternoon his wife turned away, and he from her. He thought of his ex-wife and the way she acted. He watched the movie he found in the box. The entire enterprise was managed by not less than one technician. He told his new wife as she put on her summer season gown and he did not run a finger. “So you want to go back to it?” said his wife. “To her?” He held up: stop. “Yes and no,” he said. He tried to explain. In her greatest movie she had a full efficiency of canopy scenes. It was a source of awards. And yet as she made that movie she was never very sure of herself. She would turn to his right, where he sat, and say, “What do you consider this and what do you consider this particular person?” He gave answers and made it all masterful . Years later with his new wife he came clean with it. “I wish to make a pair with her again. In a movie. Can you discover me an assistant?” 

By this arrived Olivia. His new wife didn’t even attempt her out. She just flew her to the airport and charged her with the task. “What he needs, please find,” she said. Olivia nodded sagely.

So how to make the pair? Olivia reached his ex-wife who mentioned she would signal back however did not. On one Monday, Olivia told Allen “She’s going to name you in half an hour,” after which it did by no means occur. He had her number but pride prevented him from it. Instead he went home to his wife but at night watched the movie again lastingly. He called back Olivia. “Inform her I mentioned hello,” he said. 

“She’s engaged on a challenge,” Olivia said. “She wishes to embody you. Stand by.”

The next day, with no mention, he called Olivia again. “Don’t fear,” she said. “She will name you. You are going to be top idea.”

Instead it was Olivia who came to his house, sporting a jacket with patches of mirrors throughout it. Issues moved actually rapidly. They did a number of days of acting in the primary building. The second week of it was clear that what was happening was a movie. Olivia confirmed up: “Take one,” “Action,” “Cut.” She advanced with know-how like throwing her voice by means of a tube. At least one scene, a salaciously sluggish argument, was a return for him to soiled-thoughts days. It was similar to a freight prepare. 

“Oh my god,” Olivia said. “They are going to comprehend you.” 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

FIVE PEOPLE I NEVER MET, AND HOW THEY DIED

First off let me say that Robert was a goon. He went to school indifferently and sullenly, kept his head down except when he was cheating on a test, went to summer school, flunked out, went to night school, threw a rock through the trophy case, went to juvie, bungled a grand larceny, and got sent to prison. In prison his cellmate was a guy named Frank Nakamichi. This Nakamichi character was doing time for arson. Some guys served their sentences. Frank Nakamichi didn't. He escaped through a tunnel, stabbed a guard in the throat in the process. He then returned to Tokyo, where he became a smuggler of rare fish, an adjutant to a mid-level boss, and, in time, one of the most powerful criminals in Japanese history. Frank Nakamichi died in a gundown on Kosaka Saiwai Street in 1979. 

Second off let me say that Robert's first wife was a woman named Eileen. She had rescued Robert after he got out of prison--he had been a pretty heavy drinker in his day, and Eileen believed in the Bible and wasn't afraid to say so--and to repay her for her care and her comfort he married her. They had one child, a son named Arthur, and then Eileen miscarried a handful of times. They named each of the children who they lost, even when friends and relatives suggested that naming dead children was an unhealthy practice. "Tim, Tom, Tina," Eileen said. Though Robert and Eileen were still young, they stopped trying to have more children when the doctors told her she had a rare blood disease that was causing the miscarriages. Robert and Eileen resigned themselves to Arthur, which is to say that they elevated him to godlike status. At that time, Robert owned and operated a little hardware store in downtown Portland, and all the money he made went for his son's betterment: education, entertainment, even a small savings account so that when Arthur graduated college he could start his own business without a loan. Then one day Arthur was driving with a friend, and the friend went through a red light, and a car broadsided them and killed Arthur instantly. 

Third off let me say that Eileen died from taking too many pills shortly after that. 

Fourth off let me say that Robert went on to live a life of abject dissolution for the better part of a decade. He lost the business, got back into petty scamming, then got back into larger cons. At first he was careful, the way an old thief is, but then he was less careful, and he got caught with eighty cases of stolen cigarettes. His mother, whose name was Roberta and who, when she was a younger, more vivacious woman, liked to tell people she was named after her oldest son, grew ashamed of him, so ashamed that she refused to take his phone calls. She had a stroke, then another stroke, and was buried next to her husband, who had died when Robert was only three years old. 

Fifth off let me say that Robert wrote a letter to a woman from prison. This was in 1971, and he had met her through a pen-pal program. She was a young college student named Julie Goldstein, and she believed that all incarcerated men were being denied the opportunity to improve themselves. "I agree with you implicitly," said Robert, who had learned many big words in prison. "I hope that we get the opportunity to meet face-to-face and discuss this and other pressing issues in contemporary criminology." Julie wrote back to ask Robert if he had any violent tendencies toward women. "No," he wrote, "and I never have. I was a thief, not a thug." They were married eleven months later. At their wedding, which was sparsely attended on both sides due to the unusual circumstances, a man who worked in the kitchen had a heart attack and died. He was a Japanese man named Arthur. His name broke Robert's heart. Four years after Julie and Robert were married, he was released from prison on account of good behavior. He got a job driving a truck that made morning deliveries to restaurants. He was a hard worker and soon had purchased three trucks. It brought in enough money to make a stable life with Julie, who was teaching elementary school. Two years after Robert was released from prison, he and Julie welcomed a son, Ezra. Julie insisted on raising him in her faith, and Robert did not disagree. "You have given me nearly everything," he said to her one night. The more intimate Robert became, the more formal his speech. "Who am I to stand in the way of a significant spiritual desire such as this one?" Julie kissed Robert. Ezra cried softly from the next room: nightmares. Julie and Robert held each other and pledged to have another child, and another one after that. They never did. They live in Seattle. I have never been to Seattle, or any nearer to it than San Francisco.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

CONSUMER PROTECTION

I will not be paying the bill that I received yesterday. I have retained the services of a lawyer to ensure that I am protected in my decision to do so. The reason is simple: as it turns out, there is no such thing as heaven. I was sold the package with the understanding that there was, and that moreover I would be secured a spot there and availed of all privileges and services, inclusive: fluffy pillows, ceaseless happiness, the company of attractive intimates and equally attractive strangers, free meals, the ability to fly. Imagine my shock, then, when upon expiring (a heart attack, and a bit of a surprise—I was sure that the wasting disease would take me) I learned that what awaited me was simply an empty void, colorless, odorless, and mostly soundless—I say mostly because I could (and do) hear the sound of individual cells popping apart, a faint noise that occurs once a second and that will, as a result, last for (this estimate is based on a count of 15 trillion cells in the human body, only a rough guess of my own inventory) four hundred and fifty thousand years. It’s been a day and a bit. That’s about ninety thousand pops. By now, I see that I’ve been duped. Your representative, the one that had me all hopped up on ideas of heaven, made promises and then some, and in that light, the bill did not seem unreasonable. Now it does. You should be ashamed for taking advantage of a dying man. Pop, pop, pop. Come for me in court if you like. You won’t see a penny.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas