An excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Photorealistic Raccoons.
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Sitting on an old white bedspread under a tree, Gerry looked through his stack of comic books, wondering what he should read next. Perhaps Mekka Lords? Nah, he’d grown bored with the current plotline; Dr. Harmer has taken control of Mekka City’s protektors again? Shouldn’t the chief protektors have gotten fired after the second time at least? Or how about the new Silverquake? Maybe, but leafing through the issue, Gerry could see the story took place in the ghetto. He saw enough blacks in real life, thank you. Or The Mighty Victors? Pretty good art by Dick Dobbins, especially during that quantum matter battle in the Zordonian space station, but Gerry had already read that issue twice. He should have taken the time to choose better comics instead of waiting till the last second then grabbing whatever he could find at home. But even the worst comics were better than this sorry place, Presque Isle, that peninsula jutting out into Lake Erie, near the city of Erie.
His parents sat behind him in folding chairs, his mother reading Newsweek (THE NIXON TAPES), his father reading U.S. News & World Report (BUGGING INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE). Gerry had always had an interest in current events, not as much as his parents, but enough to make him feel more sophisticated than his classmates, whose favorite pastime involved placing ketchup packets on the street, watching vehicles drive over the packets, and—
“Excuse me?”
Two people had walked up: a man carrying a folded folding chair, and a girl carrying an oversized tote bag.
“Excuse me?” the man repeated, addressing Gerry’s parents. “Do you mind if my daughter and I plop down next to you, here in the shade? If I spend more than five minutes out in the sun, I turn into beef jerky.”
“I know what you mean,” Gerry’s mother replied. “I burn pretty easily myself.”
“So you don’t mind if we plop down here?”
“I don’t mind. Do you mind, Roy?”
“Nope,” Roy answered.
“Thanks,” the man said. He unfolded his chair: green mesh fabric on a gray aluminum frame. “What a coincidence we have the same chairs, huh?”
“Uh-huh,” Gerry’s mother said.
“Great minds think alike.”
“They certainly do.”
The man sat down in his chair. The girl sat down next to Gerry on the bedspread and placed the bag between them.
“So, I guess we should introduce ourselves,” her father said. “We’re the Seahorse family. And yes, really, that’s our last name, Seahorse. It’s been in our family for generations. Along with”—he pointed at his face—“my cute little button nose.”
Gerry’s parents laughed. In reality, that guy had a nose like a bloated cantaloupe, like the Screaming Ghost’s nose in Hatchetman, not one of Gerry’s favorite comics, one he’d stopped reading months ago after that boring Battle Renewed plot where the characters spent far more time whining about their lives instead of, you know, battling.
“Anyway, you can call me Jake,” he continued. “And this here’s my perfect peach, my daughter Margot. Margot with a silent T at the end—a T for ‘terrific.’ ” He turned to face her. “Say ‘hi,’ Margot.”
“Hi,” she muttered.
“Tell them how old you are, Margot.”
She didn’t respond.
“Margot?”
No response.
“She’s thirteen. You know how moody teenagers can get.”
“No I didn’t. Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said, staring at something in the distance.
The adults laughed.
Jake and Margot looked alike. They each had light red hair, pasty skin, and a lanky physique. And—ahem—that cute little button nose.
“I’m Roy Blanchard, my wife Helen, our son Gerry-with-a-G,” Gerry’s father said.
“G for ‘Gee, our son’s great,’ right?’ Jake asked.
“Right.”
“How old are you, Gerry?”
“Twelve,” he said.
“He’s growing up fast,” Helen said. “He starts junior high in a couple weeks.”
I present the following excerpt from my upcoming Kindle book, The Making of Indecent Betrayal: Two Versions.
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“I have some news that’ll knock your jock off,” Frank told me one morning as I wiped down the espresso machine. We were baristas at Coffee Clutch, the airport development district’s latest upscale coffeehouse. “I’m going to direct my first movie.”
“Really?” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to direct.”
“Neither did I, till a few weeks ago. I thought, why the hell not? I’ve always liked movies.”
“That doesn’t mean you know how to make one.”
“Anyone can make a movie if they really want to.”
“Whatever you say, Spielberg,” I said, placing an eighteen-ounce bag of Coffee Clutch Dark Decaf Ground Coffee, Special Yellow Ribbon Edition (an unspecified portion of sales going towards unspecified 9/11 charities), onto the shelving unit next to the machine.
“I’m serious,” Frank said. “I went to the city last week and bought some pretty advanced filmmaking equipment—uh, let’s see, two digital videocams, some tripods for the videocams, some digital recording gear, some special-effects software, a couple of spotlights, even one of those clapperboards that you clap down on when you wanna start shooting a scene? Yeah, I bought all that stuff. It cost a little over five grand.”
“Wow.”
“Told you I was serious about directing.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
“I maxed out my Discover card, the only card I had left. The only card I hadn’t already maxed out? The one I try to avoid using, ’cause it charges a million and a half percent interest each month? I’m that serious about directing. I’ve even written a screenplay, my first one ever.”
“What’s it called?”
“Indecent Betrayal. It’s an erotic thriller. I grew up watching erotic thrillers on cable. What can I say, I like boobies.”
“Right. So when do you plan to start filming?”
“This Saturday. At the mansion.”
“Do your parents know?”
“Uh-huh. I told them. They thought it was cute I wanted to direct, like they thought I was five years old and I had said”—high-pitched voice—“ ‘When I gwow up, I wanna be a fi-wuhman, or, or an astwonaut, or, or, or Chief Justice of the Supweme Court, yaaaay!’ ” Frank had clapped during that “yaaaay!” part but apparently not loud enough for our supervisor to hear in the backroom, or else she would have stepped out front and berated us. The two or three customers sitting in our coffeehouse (it was the mid-morning lull) apparently hadn’t heard, either.
“Anyways,” Frank continued, “my parents did permit me to film there, at the mansion, as long as I didn’t do any damage. Plus they’ll stay out of my way, ’cause I knew even before asking that they’ll be in Miami for the weekend on business. But they don’t know about the mature content I plan to film, so”—Frank lifted his finger to his lips—“Shhhhh.”
“Yeah.”
I put some Coffee Clutch Maximum Mocha Cake Pops into the display case.
“So I was wondering,” Frank said. “Would you like to help me out on Saturday?”
“Help you out?”
“With the cameras, the lights, all that technical stuff.”
“I don’t know a thing about movie-making.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem for you, Mac.”
“I guess not.”
“I’ll give you a copy of the screenplay beforehand, soon as I can get copies made.”
“Okay.”
“So you in?”
“I don’t know. How much you paying me?”
“Nothing. But I can give you five percent of the profits from DVD sales. I plan to make this a direct-to-video release.”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, seven percent. That’s as high as I can go. Whaddaya say, Mac?’
For previous installments of the ALWAYS WITH LOVE saga, please click here, here,here, here, and here. These two sentences don’t count toward the 128-word limit.
I’d heard rumors for years about Pastor Blake Summers, the ex-rock star. I’d heard he hadn’t quite renounced his sinful ways, that he cheated on his wife, that he liked getting handsy with his female parishioners. Even if those rumors were true, I didn’t care, ’cause we need imperfect vessels to spread God’s word. Donald Trump, the most imperfect vessel of all, he gave us three Supreme Court justices that helped overturn Roe, preventing millions of future preborn babies from getting murdered. And Pastor Summers, he wants to stop transgenderism, same as me. So of course I appeared on his podcast, though I did bring my husband Brandon along. Anyone who bothers me, Brandon gets hansdy with them, in his own way.
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 