THANK YOU, SUSAN: A CHESSBOARD

By Ben Greenman

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

1. Harum-scarum.

2. He stood in his office brainstorming. 

3. Hell toupee.

4. Everything seemed like a bad idea.

5. He was in advertising, entrusted with devising a slogan for his company’s new hair-replacement system.

6. “Focus first on the failures of the competition,” Susan had said before turning and walking out slowly.

7. He and Susan had been married back in the day and still slipped and fell on each other’s steps at least once a year.

8. That was her phrase.

9. “Slipped and fell on my steps.”

10. She didn’t say it after she told him about focusing on the failures of the competition, but she did walk out of his office slowly, and he considered that an allusion to the same subject.

11. His phone buzzed.

12. His phone buzzed again.

13. The office was waiting for him and his slogan.

14. It was due at noon.

15. Well, at two, but at noon he had a call and then he would run aground on the day.

16. He touched his window and felt a shock of heat.

17. Outside it was at minimum a thousand degrees.

18. Rain hurtled toward the earth and sizzled on the ground. 

19. People could not be outside for more than five minutes these days, for the most part.

20. They would grow dizzy. They would grow tired. They would aspirate blood.

21. Susan’s first husband and third had both perished in that manner.

22. The third husband was on the clock still, so it shook her when he perished.

23. “Pete has perished,” she said when she called late at night.

24. She had been crying. 

25. He could tell from her voice.

26. She had cried often during their marriage.

27. She invited herself over.

28. She showed up at one in the morning, stepped out of the armor-plated taxi into the long stressglass tube that led to his front door, deradiated and deionized in the Whoosh Booth (this was what the entry chamber was called, and it was his slogan as well, invented for his firm, though done on a pro bono basis for a government still trying to explain to people what had happened, and he had been proud to work on it for free, had in fact demanded that he be paid nothing, though he also managed to look the other way when annual bonuses came along, at which time he was handsomely rewarded not only for thinking of Whoosh Booth, but for digging in his heels to make sure that it won out over the other bad ideas that made their way around the conference table, Jim’s obvious Clean Zone, Steve’s unwieldy Renormalization Station, Chris’s completely disingenuous Spa Cube).

29. The night before the presentations he got a tip from Susan on the phone that the two Olivers, who ran the company, were leaning toward Spa Cube.

30. Stupid smug Chris.

31. He couldn’t sleep.

32. He knew his idea was the better one. 

33. Susan agreed.

34. “It has music,” she said.

35. He so wanted to invite her over to slip and fall on his steps.

36. He invited her. 

37. She declined. 

38. He blamed Pete but then caught himself.

39. Jesus, what kind of monster was he?

40. Pete was dead.

41. He wished that stupid smug Chris had perished instead. 

42. Jesus, what kind of monster was he?

43. Chris had kids and a wife with some kind of foot thing.

44. He liked Chris fine when it came down to it.

45. They hung together sometimes outside the office.

46. Once on a business trip he and Chris had gone to see a show, some kind of samba review, and ended up having a nice talk about fate and disappointment and the shifting plates of identity.

47. Chris could be a good guy sometimes, a great guy.

48. He wanted to push Chris outside and watch as his fingernails started to roll up.

49. He was wigging out.

50. Wigging out!

51. The phone buzzed.

52. It yanked him back to the present.

53. The memory of the past evaporated the way that Chris’s nails would have evaporated moments after rolling up.

54. He had brought back something vital from the past.

55. Wigging out!

56. He answered the phone, now as relaxed as he’d ever been.

57. “Thank you, Susan,” he said, as he answered the phone.

58. “What?” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

59. It was not Susan, which he already knew—he could see Susan through the door and she was not on the phone.

60. “Oh,” he said. “Never mind. I was just talking to someone over here, and she had a great idea for a slogan for a hair-replacement system that we’re launching next year.”

61. “Does it focus primarily on its own virtues or does it first establish the shortcomings of the competition?”

62. “Shrewd question, my man,” he said. He was still trying to figure out who it was.

63. “Shrewd question,” he said again.

64. He sat, put his feet up on his desk, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and leaned so he could see out the window, where the world burned. 

CATCH A COLD, CAPTAIN

“Catch a cold, Captain.“ It’s the Fourth of July, or some month. Do people catch colds then? Captain can’t remember. “Catch a cold,” the boy says again. Captain’s head is stormy and he blinks until he sees the baseball and the glove. Catch a ball? They are out on the grass, picnic blankets like band-aids on grass that is bleeding green. It is getting late and Captain is getting round the bend, had kicked it off early, had reached the outer bound, was heading back in, head heavying up again, fatigue fighting elation. He asks the boy to get him cigarettes. “You can’t do that,” the boy says. “Can’t tell you what to do?” Captain says. “No,” the boy says.  “Can’t buy cigarettes. They’re not in any part of the law anymore.” Captain closes a hand gently around the boy's shoulder and walks him out of the part. “I’ll show you,” he says. “You little so-and-so. Why, I oughta.” Captain is all patter so that the boy will know not to be afraid of him. He has used the same tone several times at home. He walks the boy to the corner of the park. There’s a wooden platform there covered by a latticework. Captain has crouched beneath it and taken breathers on days that failed him. He has addressed it directly over the months, called it Atlantis and Utopia and Shangri-La and Park Avenue. These are all places he once lived. The platform beneath the lattice is not a place he has lived. It's not home as much as the other home, the one with the boy and the tone. Where does he hang his hat? Where does he park his shoes? He has promised to throw the ball to the glove but will it ever happen? A man is only as good as his rotten word. It comes to Captain suddenly that he has been speaking out loud. The boy appraises him with an expression mixing pity and anger. Captain has lost his taste for cigarettes. He will go to the store across the way and stock up and go back to the park until here in July or some month at least there is a blanket of snow over his brain.

© 2020 Ben Greenman / Stupid Ideas

WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO MAKE YOU SOME TOAST?

By Ben Greenman / @2019

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

She was getting dressed, bottomless, vest, remembering Kingsley’s hippopotamus test. “Put them in spirits,” she said. Putnam didn’t hear it. He was in the other room, sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking coffee. He was like that every morning. Similarity was the problem. She kept remembering Kingsley, and how he had observed with both mind and soul the debate over Darwin, Huxley for the defense, Owen for the prosecution. She recalled the battle over men and apes. Did one follow directly from the other? If you cut apart their brains what would you find? Kingsley, a broad church priest, had refused to duck the question, and had over time come to side with Huxley, his friend. Both felt Owen’s objections as a form of angry flailing. Owen claimed that only human brains contained a hippocampus. This briefly dampened enthusiasm for Darwin but science pushed back. Apes had them too, said science. Putnam coughed loudly, as he often did at this time. “Coming?” he said. She was not coming. She was staying where she was. Where was she? Oh, yes, the test. After witnessing the hostility between Huxley and Owen over apes and men, Kingsley had composed a bit of satire in the style of Lord Dundreary, a character known in the United States only as a result of the play that surrounded him, Our American Cousin, for it was playing in Ford’s Theater the night that Abraham Lincoln took a bullet from the gun of John Wilkes Booth, the president’s head was opened, perhaps a hippocampus was briefly glimpsed. Kingsley then reframed the debate for children in his more famous book of fairy-tales, Water Babies. He wondered if a Water Baby were to pass from life, if it was preserved in spirits and then divided, if half was sent to Huxley and half to Owen, what would they conclude? Here Kingsley changed hippocampus to hippopotamus, thinking it would better amuse young readers. He was correct. She framed the children’s tale. Did Kingsley succeed with it or fail? Did his jape protect Huxley’s position regarding Darwin’s disquisition about apes and men? And then: did Owen feel the shame of his limits? She did not know the story any further. She thought better of the vest. A white shirt would do. She knew it when she started getting dressed. She only wore the vest as a form of protest. Putnam did not like her in it. “Wait a minute,” he said whenever he saw it. He thought it made her manly. What did that make him, by extension? She ran a finger downward through her breasts, thought once more of the hippocampus test, Kingley’s fanciful embroidery, found a scarf that satisfied Putnam’s fondness for Chinoiserie, tied it round her neck, stood looking in the mirror at her body, skin and hair, thin here and fat there, places she had touched, places touched by others, knotted the scarf, discarded it, sat cross-legged atop the covers. She ran her fingers through fuzz. Her brain buzzed. She thought to touch again and then thought differently. She’d owe herself for later. Every body is a debtor and a creditor at once. “Breakfast,” Putnam called. She heard that same note of sameness, suffered it. “It’s nine,” he said. “Fine,” she said. Putnam didn’t hear her clearly. “Coming here?” he said. “It’s nine.” A second time, but louder: “Fine.” She pulled on underwear. She would eat breakfast like that. Manly? She dared him to come to that conclusion. But what if he still did? “Heaven forbid,” she said. She pulled them off, fingers twitching. In the kitchen, Putnam coughed.

SPELLING

By Ben Greenman / @2019

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

Nap was the wrong word for the pit into which he fell. A black cylinder opened up beneath him. He braced himself against the top of the walls but they were slick like oil and down he went. Light was gone. Air was gone. Ideas were gone. Family was gone. Home was gone. Down at the bottom, all he had was sleep and the idea of sleep, which was something closer to death. At least there was a bottom. At least there was something solid beneath him: Blackness, but not hard and not cold, more a kind of soil. He felt around in it with his fingers and made out shapes that he knew were the tops of letters, sharp points of capital As, rounded shoulders of Bs, curves of Cs. He could dig those letters up and make words with them. But he was sleepy again, there in his nap, and he pushed the letters back into the blackness that was like soil and stretched out flat and thought about everything that was gone, and then about nothing.

PRAHA THE CAHA

Praha the Caha met Sidney Blitz in a senior-living facility. They were in the lobby, standing in front of the check-in desk where a pleasant young woman sat, and Sidney Blitz turned toward the tall man with the hat and cane and asked whether he was visiting a spouse, as Sidney was, or perhaps a parent. “I am visiting,” the man said, “an audience!” His voice leapt into the last word and carried it higher. Sidney Blitz wrinkled his brow. “An audience?” he repeated. The man turned toward him, and Sidney noticed the jeweled bat pin on the man’s lapel. “I am,” the man said, his voice at the same altitude it had been when he had left off with “audience,” “Praha the Caha! Perhaps you have heard of me.” Sidney did not unwrinkle his brow. “Prestidigitation and mystery and the wonders of the ages!” Praha the Caha snapped his fingers, and a flame rose from them. When it receded, a business card floated just off the tip of his index finger. Sidney Blitz reached out and took it. It said exactly what Praha the Caha had said: Prestidigitation and mystery and the wonders of the ages! There was no phone number, only a picture of an upside-down top hat that resembled the one that the tall man was wearing. Sidney Blitz put the card in his pocket, glancing down briefly, and when he looked back up, the tall man was gone. “Did you see that?” Sidney Blitz said to the pleasant young woman at the check-in desk. Now it was her brow that wrinkled. “That guy was here and then he vanished,” Sidney Banes said. “Maybe he was  a magician.” Her brow unwrinkled. “Mr. Blitz,” she said, “it’s time to go back to your room.” A man appeared and took Sidney Blitz by the arm. “Let’s do this,” the man said. “You have to take your medicine and then we can watch boxing and sit in the garden. Pills and thrills and daffodils, man. Pills and thrills and daffodils.”

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

ROOM SERVICE

By Ben Greenman / @2019

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

The afternoon, to happen at all, depended on the morning, and the morning on the night. The scraping sound coming through the barely-open front window suggested that night might be in jeopardy. He tried to prepare himself. He had seen a movie about a man who was denied night, and in turn denied morning and afternoon. In the movie, the man checked into a hotel, ordered room service, accepted the tray from the man who brought it, and made a mad dash for the balcony, taking tiny bites of his sandwich as he tumbled over the railing and plunged downward through space. The man in the movie hit the ground as hard as anything ever had. The tray clattered on the ground beside him. The room in the movie was on the nineteenth floor, which ensured a consequential fall. The man checked into the tallest hotel in town. It only went up to six, but it would have to do. He ordered room service. The man who brought it was not a man. The woman who brought it looked at him in such a way that his whole plan went out the window. He ate the food, which was superb, but still turned bitter on his tongue. He was a coward. He was a patsy. He was a fool. Night was coming, or not coming, and it would be followed or not followed by morning and afternoon. A faint scraping sound was out on the balcony. He heard it as he went to bed and tried to dream of the woman who had brought him his food.

THE PEOPLE

By Ben Greenman / @2019

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

1

The people are trying to make him their king. He can tell from their eyes and the gifts that they bring. 

The people are saying his name like a prayer. He hears it whenever he’s out anywhere.

The people are worried he’s too good to rule. He lets them think that for a while; he’s cruel.

2

The people are working on their lawns. It’s not backbreaking work, but it’s honest work.

The people are sitting in front of the television. One program makes them laugh so hard that they almost choke.

The people are waking up later and later these days. If only they were staying in bed and doing in with their partners.

The people are taking pictures of each other. They pass the camera back and forth, laughing, sometimes crying.

The people are contesting charges on their credit cards. No one in the house subscribed to something called “Updates Incorporated.”

The people are researching symptoms, worried they might have something wrong with them. As it turns out, researching symptoms is one of the most common symptoms.

The people are coming over the hill, wearing dark sunglasses. They are sure that it makes them look cool.

The people are eating in a restaurant, ordering coffee and dessert. They’re watching their weight, so they’ll split it.

The people prefer bloviating (or coruscating) narratives that “take aim” at “society’s foibles.” They remove the quotes when they speak.

3

The people are hoping that he will survive. He waves to them when he goes out for a drive.

The people are lying about their intent. They stand much too close to him at each event.

The people are taking his triumph to heart. They kill him in daylight because they’re not smart.