Esquire article about NIU shooter

Have you all read this article?  It raises some good questions about the limits of nonfiction.  The author certainly tests them, as he at times writes from the perspective of the shooter.  As far as I know, the shooter left no record of his actual thoughts right before the event, but the author claims to know them and presents them alongside facts and verifiable information.

Members of my department have been engaged in an online discussion about it, and the author recently posted on it.  He did not, however, answer the question most people are asking, which is – where did he get the information?  He claimed everything he wrote was “grounded in fact.”  Interesting.  What do you think? 

http://www.esquire.com/features/steven-kazmierczak-0808?click=pp

busy…

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while or commented on anyone’s work. Things have been pretty busy lately. Once I get caught up in my summer classes, I’ll have more time to write and read what everyone has written.

reminder about the forum

Hi everyone. Just a reminder that I set up the Writers Forum for us…if you want to that is. I think you have all signed up. Here is the address again if you need it. If you would rather stick to the blog form instead, it’s cool with me, but I think that a web board sort of forum might engender a little more sharing of ideas, plus older stories won’t get lost as easily.

http://www.elegantmistake.com/forum/

detective poem

sorry it took so long – I actually abandoned what I was writing in favor of this, since the previous effort was seriously going nowhere. I tried to incorporate the elements that make det. fiction work for me into a poem (unreality, sense of forboding, etc.) but don’t know how well it works. Let me know what you think. I will be back on later to comment on everyone else’s work – I’m looking forward to reading, and am extremely happy that more and more people are joining in. As long as the voices aren’t just in my head, the doctor says I will be okay.

_C

            Stolen Dreams by: C. Brannon Watts

 

You told me about it, awake

but whose children are these?

whose children

            standing alone

            fish-grouped in a scene from a market stall

            outside the hotel where

they found the body

they being you

and some amalgam of me + your

sister

 

the hotel was empty but for us

walking outside

we could see the flood waters a mile away

smell the reeds and mud

            one hundred feet to the body bag

            one hundred feet to an abandoned someone

no tags             no coroner’s logo

re-elections are lost this way,

I remember saying

 

and we opened it,

there on the sidewalk

under an autumn sun that could have cared less

blithely strewing cancer and barbecues alike

with fat golden laces;

the whips of indifference

 

the children watched from across the street

no longer important to the vignette

faded and insubstantial as the garbage near their Chuck Taylor’s

losing permanence as the sun went down

 

the body?

it almost doesn’t matter.

The form was androgynous

black, with graying hair in a jerry curl,

unformed breasts, and two lateral cuts above the navel

male? female? some amalgam like me/your sister, here, in this place

that is no place

 

we had no ideas – there were no police

and in the logic of dreams, we didn’t think to call

so instead, we took the body with us,

curiously without odor, washed out like the children

like an object found in an attic

a dried flower arrangement

or some hand-carved cameo of the unknown

and showed your father,

the voice and warrant of wisdom in these

halls of power

these halls with no walls

echoed his words:

I don’t want to see that. Call the police.

 

from there, of course, no vision, stolen dream that it is.                       

 

 

 

detective story

This is a work in progress, though I’m really not sure where I’m going with it. As a basic idea, I thought it was kind of funny, but I’m not sure how well that translated into something concrete. 

 

 

The Case of the Crimson Herring

by Zach Sands

The splintered light of morning made an impressive entrance into the otherwise featureless room. The imposing shadow on the office wall wore an enormous fedora, slouched like the figure beneath it. The walls themselves were a cancerous shade of nicotine. The whiskey on his desk would sometimes catch the light, cast it in a sepia tone and throw it back in his stubbled face. Fast asleep, he showed little indication of being alive. His shallow breaths were haunted by bottom shelf booze and stale cigarettes. The haze in his mind only thickened the air in his throat. It lingered like an unwelcome guest or the hangover that he was about to meet. Something in his sleep stirred him awake to find the world. It was exactly as he left it the night before, except now the heavy wrinkles in his clothes seemed to mirror the lines in his weathered face.

As his eyes took focus, first one, then the other, he squinted to read the backward letters on the frosted window of the office door. JIMMY SLANT, P.I. He wondered how much longer he could afford to keep his name on display. It was repeated in various foms in triplicate scattered across his desk, most of which were bills, drawn to the undertow in a lifeless sea of paper. The bottle and the telephone served as the lighthouse and the citadel. They kept an eye on the tide, which sometimes sent papers adrift under the unwavering urgency of the ceiling fan.

Jimmy picked up the receiver to make sure it still worked. It hadn’t rung in weeks. The only case he had wasn’t really a case. He figured it out after the first couple of months, but he never told Ms. Norwell what he knew. Her husband was indeed alive and well, though missing for three and a half years now, living in a trailer park in Florida. She got the life insurance and he got a few bad habits in Tallahassee. She had hired Jimmy to find him after he never came home from work. He had called and said he was going be pulling a late night at the office, and then she never saw him again. It didn’t take much legwork to track him down – just about a dozen phone calls and a trip to Florida. Jimmy wanted to confirm his suspicions and check out the dog tracks. Ms. Norwell covered all of his expenses, and he figured that with the payoff of that policy, she could afford to help keep him afloat for a little while longer.

Jimmy had a stainless steel snubnose .38 special in the top drawer of his desk. He liked the way it felt in his hand, somehow making room temperature always feel cold at first. He popped open the cylinder and spun it around, clean as the day he bought it. When it caught the light, it shined like the eyes of God. With a snap and a click, he pulled the gun on the closed door just as he had done a thousand times before. Jimmy had never fired this gun. He didn’t even own any bullets.

A thin silhouette took shape in the door frame. He put the gun back in the desk before the first knock had landed. Before he shut the drawer, he noticed that his car keys weren’t where he usually kept them.

“Yeah,” he grumbled to the figure beyond the door. His voice was like dirt. The first words of the morning usually were. “Door’s open.” He had read enough detective novels to know that these were always the moments that a dame was bound to walk in, looking for somebody to keep her safe. Jimmy straightened his hair and composed himself as the doorknob gently turned.

It was the janitor. He had a face like a well-worn leather shoe. He was there to empty the wastebasket. He was startled to see Jimmy sitting at his desk.

“You’re here early,” the old man said with smile that seemed to be holding a vote between teeth and no teeth. It looked like no teeth held the majority. Jimmy turned to face the ancient metal clock that stated the time. Six thirty-seven.

 “You’re a hard worker, Mr. Slant.” His nametag said Eddie. He had to use both hands to lift the wastebasket.

“Are you new here?”

“No, sir. I’ve been working here for twenty-seven years.”

“Oh.”

 “You haven’t by any chance seen some keys laying around here, have you?”

“No, I don’t believe I have.”

“Are you cracking wise with me, mister?”

His eyes went to the mess of papers on his desk. “You think they might be under there somewhere?”

“I’m a detective. Things don’t just hide right under my nose like that.”

“No, I suppose they don’t.”

As soon as the janitor had left, Jimmy shifted some papers around, inadvertently disposing a few to the whims of the ceiling fan. He crawled under the desk to retrieve them. His keys weren’t under there either. His face was practically touching the floor when the door swung open. All he could see was legs.

“Hello?” she  asked. Her voice was like candy and smoke. “Is there anyone here?”

Jimmy emerged from beneath the desk like a deep sea diver with vertigo. The air was heavy asnd the room began to spin. The papers were caught in a tropical storm. The doorway framed her like a Botticelli. She was still all legs. By the time he found her face, he had already forgotten what day it was. This girl was trouble, that much was certain.

“Mr. Slant. I’m Barbara. Barbara Fish.” Her perfume danced with the staleness in the room. It smelled like coconuts in a wet cardboard box. Jimmy didn’t know a Barbara Fish, but dames like this were like backgammon – complicated, with rules that never seemed to make a bit of sense.

 “What are you here for, Mrs. Fish?”

“Actually, it’s Miss Fish.” She had a smile that could cut glass, even glass made out of diamonds. She chose her words like a fine dessert in a classy restaurant. “I need you to help me.”

“Miss Fish.” He paused to light a cigarette – his words smouldered from his dry lips. “I’m not to here to help anybody.”

Her eyes went to the bottle. “You’re just here to help yourself, is that it?” She had him all figured out, like a crossword puzzle where the only word is obvious.

“Just like everybody else.” Jimmy poured himself a drink into a dirty coffee mug. World’s Greatest Private Detective. The sad truth was that he had it made it himself. It cost twelve dollars.

He took a long drag off the crooked cigarette, then chased it with some whiskey. It was like battery acid and bug spray.

She leaned in over the cluttered desk.“What if I said that I’m here to help you?”

Jimmy sipped the whiskey.

“I’m looking for something Mr. Slant.” Her movements were precise, almost invisible. “And I need you to help me find it.”

“Why me?” Jimmy set his drink on letter from Columbia House. He still had six more CDs to buy this year at regular price.

“I heard you’re the best.” Her words were like jazz. “I also hear you take coupons.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy, lady,” he said as his face found a shadow in the room. “Those coupons expired years ago. I was a different person then.”

She pointed away from him. “That’s your name on the door, isn’t it?”

She had him there. There were only two Jimmy Slants in the phone book, and the other one was a pork inspector.

“What’s the job?” He leaned forward as he spoke. Even his voice seemed to squint.

“Meet me at this address at midnight.” She scribbled on the back of an Arby’s napkin. “Make sure no one follows you.”

With that, she was gone, like a dream lost to consciousness, leaving Jimmy alone once again in his little world. On the back of the napkin was an address that sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it – somewhere on the northwest side of town.

The buses didn’t run that late. He would have to find his keys.

 

 

detective story

This was a tough assignment.  Thanks for the challenge, Zach.  I wanted to write a fictional story, but I just wasn’t up to it, so I wrote this instead.  I’ll be in Vegas for the next week and won’t be posting.  I’ll check in next weekend, either on this site or the new one.  Can’t wait to read everyone else’s stuff.

 

Crime Fighter

By Jessica Baldwin

“In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.”

This phrase echoed through my house and called me into action. It told me to stop writing, put down the laundry, ignore prior commitments and help my friends solve yet another crime. Before Law and Order, which first aired in 1990, I spent my Sunday evenings hunting down killers with Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote. Anywhere the poor woman went, death was on her heels. She was a grandmotherly grim-reaper in a smart pant suit. But she always found the killer and served justice, usually alongside a helping of moral advice. I adored her.

I became just as fond of my colleagues at One Police Plaza and in the New York District Attorney’s office. Though grittier than Ms. Fletcher, the Law and Order detectives were equally successful at tracking down killers in the span of an hour. With so many seasons, and so many versions of the show, I could almost always find an episode and check in with their current case. If I’d seen it before, I could be especially helpful, yelling at the television, “the brother did it, don’t waste your time with the girlfriend.” Sometimes I came to this conclusion as early as seven seconds into the show (yes, I’ve timed it). If I hadn’t seen the episode, though, I had to rely on more than my expert recall. This is when I offered them my well-honed instincts and my keen perceptions. I’d kindly warn the detectives to “check out the mother again, she’s too cooperative,” or suggest they “lay off the street thug, he’s not your real criminal.”

After Lenny, er Jerry Orbach, the actor who played Lenny Briscoe on Law and Order, left the show and died shortly after, I got choked up every time I watched it. We’d developed such a bond over the last decade, and I missed his wisecracks about his ex-wife and his yuppy partners. The streets of New York were tough without him, so I turned my attention elsewhere. This is when I began my interest in true crime shows. Better to watch true stories about death and mayhem involving people I don’t know, I figured. And soon I began uncovering Suburban Secrets, reading Forensic Files, and closing Cold Case Files. These programs, known in my house as my Mysteries, have given me an advanced education in crime solving. Now I can be heard declaring to the officers on the show, whether real or re-enactors, “spray the ex’s trailer with Luminal, I’m sure you’ll find blood,” or “I guarantee once the neighbor’s fingerprints go to the lab, the mass spectrometer will reveal a match to the killer’s.”

At a recent dinner with colleagues from work (my day job, as a teacher), a co-worker related her experience with a former boss who sexually harassed her. He was creepy and controlling and made her life intolerable. She told us how she’d gone so far as to concoct a plan to kill him. She was going to invite him to the shooting range and “accidentally” shoot him at close range. “It would’ve been fool-proof,” she claimed.

The table went silent. I was in shock. This was a very intelligent woman, but what she was telling us was preposterous. Fool-proof? Not unless the angle of trajectory was calculated very carefully beforehand. If not, it would raise suspicion. Forensic scientists would re-stage the crime scene and discover her account of the shooting didn’t match up with the evidence. Then they would uncover the boss’s mistreatment of her and establish her motive. It would be over for her at that point. Quite foolish, really. Fortunately for her, she changed jobs instead of attempting such an amateur crime.

Another woman I work with found her soon-to-be-ex-husband lying at the bottom of the stairs. He’d fallen and was unconscious when she discovered him. If she’d come back to work instead of going to the Intensive Care Unit with her fallen husband, I’d have advised her, “get a lawyer, and do not say anything to the police.”

I like this woman, and I don’t really think she would try to murder her husband, but true crime shows have taught me nothing if not to suspect the spouse, even in an “accident.” I wanted her to know her rights before she was coerced into a confession for a crime she didn’t commit. In fictional crime shows, the spouse isn’t usually the culprit, as that would be cliche and predictable. In true crime dramas, however, the spouse is nearly always involved. Add the impending threat of a divorce and you’re almost certainly looking at a domestic situation.

And the ol’ staircase routine has been done many times. Forensic science can recreate the fall with chilling accuracy. Evidence can show if he fell or was pushed. Evidence that my poor co-worker won’t be able to dispute. I wonder if she’s prepared for all of this. Then I realize he didn’t die and she was at work at the time of the fall, so it probably won’t matter. Still, perhaps I should share some of my insights with her, just in case. Dear God I hope she didn’t recently raise the payout on his life insurance policy listing her as the beneficiary.

While canoeing with my fiancé this weekend, we encountered a small, overgrown cove branching off the river. He asked if I wanted to venture into it. The scene reminded me of a recent episode of Investigators, in which one spouse set up the other to be killed by luring them into a secluded park. I replied, “Why, do you have grand plans for a “romantic rendevous” back there?” “Oh, they’re grand, alright,” he said with a smirk, “fifty grand.”

I laughed, as did he. Then I began to realize how morbid we’ve become. Is this what too much “reality” television does to a person? I wanted to give a co-worker tips on committing a fool-proof crime, and I suspected an innocent and distressed coworker of murder. Now I’m joking about offing my fiance before he can do it to me. Ha ha. We’re not even married and we’re making plans for each other’s demise. How romantic.

The true crime shows have provided me a window into the demented psyches of real killers and into the cunning minds of real detectives. And what has become of my own mind? I’m thinking like the criminal, which I know is an asset as a detective, but which I suspect is not altogether healthy for me. Jessica Fletcher never talked, even jokingly, about “offing” anyone. And Lenny Briscoe, despite the cruelties he witnessed, managed to stay on the right side of the law. Ah, Jessica and Lenny, my old friends. I’ve missed them. I’ve missed their charms and their ability to wrap up crimes before I could finish a bag of popcorn. I was always on their side, never that of the bad guys. They made crime-fighting quick and easy, the way I prefer it. I suspect I should meet up with them again, and go back to helping them with their fictional cases. Otherwise, I may end up using my years of experience for evil instead of good. I may end up the subject of the next episode of Investigators.

detective story

hey guys,

first of all, it probably goes without saying, but i’m a new contributer to this blog.  it seems like a pretty cool thing you’ve all got going, so i’ll contribute to it as much as i can.

here’s a silly little story i threw together as a way of introduction…

 

The Bloody Tile

By Joel Hattis

 

I hope I’m not a cliché.

In fact, since you brought it up, I think that’s what I want on my tombstone—just so there’s no confusion.

 

 

Wallard Hardy Ronders

1987 — Whatever-Year-I-Die

 

“I Hope I Wasn’t A Cliché”

 

 

There’s nothing worse than that, right?  To be something that everyone has already seen, to be nothing that no one’s never met.  To be a story that’s already been told.  A life already lived.  Something that anyone can imagine, that any fool can conjure and paint or tell or speak or write.

I think that’s why all this bothers me as much as it does.  It was so obvious, such an easy solution, such a simple, tidy, uncomplicated, happy resolution.  It had to be cliché.  It was something of dime-store novellas.

No.

It was something of Hollywood cookie-cutters.

No, not that either.

What it was, was something of stories written in crayon, taped the fridges of mothers of eight-year-old boys, boys who are just discovering the subtle art of creating something to an end but unable to cope with an end that isn’t resolute, that isn’t safe, that isn’t happy.

But the way things unfold—you can’t change that.  Even if they unfold in ways that make you wonder whether your life is something you hope it’s not.

How something happens is how something happened.  That’s how things are.

 

How this thing was: It all began with a dropped spoon.

* * * *

I was sitting in the cafeteria, just finishing up my sandwich.

Most people like to eat their soup and then their sandwich.  But not me.  I eat my sandwich first.

The sandwich was—I don’t remember, I’m not good with details—but I remember that the soup was tomato, which isn’t significant, other than the fact that it’s a detail I remember.  I went for my spoon, which I had on my side, and I accidentally knocked it onto the ground.

You should know that my hands shake.  It’s something they’ve always done.  It’s not being nervous or being sick or being tired or being hungover.  All those things make it worse, but even when I’m perfectly tip-top, my hands shake.  My mother thinks it’s early signs of Parkinson’s.

Usually it doesn’t affect me and I only ever notice it when I’m reading a book or when other people point it out to me, but on this one single significant time, it did.

So my spoon’s on the ground.  I had no intention of using it—it was plastic and there was plenty of other ones back by the register—but I’m a good enough human being to pick up after myself.

So I did.

And when I bent my head down and reached under the table, I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

It was a faint streak of red.

Now, this was a cafeteria, serving the typical fare college cafeterias serve, so there were plenty of red colored foods that might fall off someone’s plate, land on the ground, get smeared, get cleaned up, a missed smudge, a stained tile.

But I know what a smudged strawberry or stained ketchup looks like, and there was something different about this red.  It was darker.  Like a beet, but less purple and more black.  It was dark-black red.

“Wally.”

I looked up.  Of course it was Maddy.

“Maddy.”

“Wally.  What the hell are you doing.”  It wasn’t a question.

“How are you, Maddy?”

“Class sucks.”

“I know.”  I shifted up from under the table, stumbled as I stood, and found myself uncomfortably close to Maddy.

Which is to say, I was quite happy to be near her, but—socially—it just wasn’t proper.  So I shifted back, leaning awkwardly on the table.

* * * *

See.

Here’s something that makes everything even more cliché than everything already was.  I just introduced a girl, implied that I find her physically attractive, and insinuated that I’m self-conscious around her.  Clearly I’m not with her, but clearly I’d like to be with her.

So, do you think I’m going to end up with her?

Here’s a hint:

* * * *

“What were you doing down there?”

“I thought I saw something.”

“What did you see?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so,” I said.  “Yeah.”  I looked at the floor, down behind her feet, and there was another smudge of faded red smear.

She saw me focus on it and turned.  “Some more,” she said indifferently.

I nodded.  “Look,” I said, pointing further down the floor to another spot.

“Weird,” she said indifferently.

* * * *

As we left the cafeteria I felt a pair of eyes on my back.  I turned and, out of the corner of my eye, saw one of the dishwashers—a short man with bad posture, a sharp, crooked nose, whose face rested in a snarl—glaring at me.  When I turned, he turned, but for a split-second we shared a look.  A knowing look.  A look that knew that he knew that I knew.  That we both knew something, but that something could have been anything.  But it wasn’t nothing.  We both knew that the other knew something.

* * * *

Me and Maddy walked outside.

The short day brought a cold night.  My breath billowed in the soft breeze.  She was bundled in a sweater, her arms held tightly against her chest.

“It’s cold out.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are we out here again?”

“That had to be blood.”

“I guess.”

I leaned against the wall and reached into my pocket, pulling out a small brown pipe and a bag of tobacco.  You should know that I don’t smoke cigarettes.  Other people smoke cigarettes.  I smoke a pipe.  Pipes are smooth.  Pipes taste better.  Pipes smell better—they’re more mature.

They’re something most people don’t smoke.

“That guy, he looked at me funny,” I said, taking a lump of tobacco and shaking it into the pipe.

“Who?”

“The dishwasher.”

“What about him?”

“He looked at me funny.”

“So?”

“So.  I think he saw me looking at the blood.”

“Are we still talking about that?”

Maddy had a way of making me do things I didn’t want to.  Like giving up the conversation, even when I knew something wasn’t kosher.  “No,” I said.

“Good.  Then can we please go inside?”

I hadn’t even lit my pipe yet.  “Sure.”

“Why did we even come out here?”

A couple of guys I knew from the dorm walked past us, chatting excitedly.

“I know, man,” one of them said.  “This isn’t the first time.”

“Whatever, he’ll turn up.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Who will turn up?” I said to them.

They turned, startled that I was standing there, as if I had been a brick in the wall.

“Mark Effing,” the first one said, almost as if embarrassed.

“What about him?” I said back.

“No one knows where he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?  No one can find him, and his cell won’t pick up.”

I glanced at Maddy.  It was meant to be significant, but she just looked bored.

“He does this sometimes,” said the other.  “Just goes on a binge by himself.  He’ll show up.”

“Yeah, probably,” said the first one.

“When was the last time you saw him,” I said.

“I had lunch with him yesterday,” said the other.  “Had to get to class though, so I left him there.”

“In the cafeteria?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “So what?”

“Just curious,” I said, putting my hands up.  “Just curious.”

One of them shook his head, the other shrugged.  They kept on walking.

“See,” I said to Maddy.

“See what?”

“You see what I mean?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.  “It’s cold out here.  I’m going inside.”

Normally I would have followed her, but something was different about that day.  I could feel it in my fingers, underneath the numbness.  A pulsing of fire, a prick of anxiety.  I stood out there with my thoughts, my packed pipe in hand, unlit.  I started to walk aimlessly, a stroll, to consider what it was I was trying to consider.  I walked and thought and then thought for a while, while I walked.  What was going on here?  Was it really this simple?  Mark was missing.  Was he dead?  The cafeteria was splattered with blood.  Was that where he was killed?  The dishwasher glared at me.  Was he the culprit?

I needed more evidence.

And just as I thought this, I stumbled upon some.

* * * *

And that’s another thing.  In stories like this, everything is always so timely.  When something needs to happen, it usually does.

* * * *

It was the dumpster.  I had been walking past it when I looked up and saw that hanging over the side of it was a rag, stained the same bloody color as the cafeteria tile.

I walked over to it and grabbed the rag, eyeing it carefully.  It couldn’t be anything else.  And I knew exactly who the rag belonged to.

I pocketed the rag, ran back inside the dorm, and went to Maddy’s room.

* * * *

“It’s a white rag.”

“Stained with blood!”

“Everyone uses rags.”

“No, not like this.  This is a rag to dry dishes.”

“A rag to dry dishes?”

“They have a ton of them in the dishwashing room.”

“They probably have a ton of them in the janitor’s closet, too.”

Maddy’s roommate, Ali, took off her headphones and turned away from her computer.  “What are you guys talking about?”

“Wally thinks he’s a superhero.”

“You know Mark Effing?” I said to Ali.

“No.”

“I think he was killed by one of the dishwashers downstairs.”

“How can a dishwasher kill you?”

“What?”

“I mean, it doesn’t have any arms.  It’s not like it can stab you or anything,” she said.  “It would have to be your fault.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said a dishwasher killed that kid.  If he was killed by a dishwasher, it would have to be his own fault.  Like if he got himself caught on one of the parts, or if he stuck his head somewhere he shouldn’t be.”

I slapped my head.  “No, I mean he was killed by one of the people who wash dishes.”

“Oh.”

Maddy spoke up.  “Wally thinks he’s a superhero.”

“Why do you think he was killed by one of the guys who wash dishes?”

“He found a bloody rag.”

“So?” Ali said.  “Everyone uses rags.”

“Exactly.”

“But I also found blood on the cafeteria floor.”

“How do you know it wasn’t tomato sauce?”

“And then when I was walking out one of the dishwashers glared at me.”

Ali yawned.  “You make a convincing argument.”  She put her headphones on and turned back to her computer.

“Whatever,” I said.  “I know what I know.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know what I know.”

I guess I had a suspicious look on my face, because then Maddy said, “Don’t do what I think you’re gonna to do.”

“What am I gonna do?”

“Just don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Something stupid.”

* * * *

And another thing:

In these kinds of stories there’s always that one scene where everything comes together in a neat little package, where every lose end is tied, where you come away feeling content.  The good guys go home.  The bad guys incur the pitiless wrath of justice.

I hate that scene.  Life isn’t like that.  The only time ends are ever tied is when you have to cut two others for string.

* * * *

What Maddy doesn’t understand is that I don’t do stupid things.  She might say that the things I do are stupid.  I might even do something that in hindsight seemed like a stupid idea.

But something that is stupid is something that is done to no end.  While you might do something and that something might, in fact, yield no end, that you did it to an end—for a purpose, for some sensible reason, even if it was only sensible at the time—means that you are acting with will, and will is never stupid.  It might be foolish or myopic or dastardly, but will is never stupid.

So, while she told me not to do something stupid and I’ll generally do anything she wants me to, I didn’t think that sneaking into the dish room in the early hours of the morning was stupid—and I still say it’s not.  After all, I had a good reason to do it.

So I went and did it.

* * * *

The cafeteria was located in a well-lit part of the building, on the first floor, just down from the main entrance.  There were security cameras everywhere, but I didn’t care if they saw me—my end would justify my action, it would need no explanation.

I had discovered one drunken night a while ago that the lock to the cafeteria was easily picked—all it took was a credit card.

The thing was, the door to the cafeteria creaks when it’s opened, so I had to open it slowly and only slightly.  I snaked in and in the moonlit darkness, I went over to the dish room, where I flipped on the switch and the florescent lights blinked the flickering darkness into light, scattering a number of roaches that had gathered by a drain in the orange-tiled floor.  I began searching—for anything.  For a bucket of bloody water, for a knife or a broom or a glass with any remnants of trauma, for a shoe, for a print, for a mark of anything that wasn’t what it ought to be.  I shuffled through the racks of dishes, lifted the rubber flaps of the machine, went through piles and piles and piles of empty containers and cleaning agents and trays and garbage bags.

I looked.

I looked.

I looked some more.

And then I looked even more.

And when I was thinking about possibly giving up and considering not looking anymore…

…there was the faint sound of the cafeteria door creaking.  I wasn’t alone.  My instinct was to go to the switch, to flip the lights off, to conceal myself with the darkness of the night, but I realized that would only make things worse.  It would admit I was there.  As it was, it could be a mistake, someone who was the last one out, who was supposed to be the one to flip the switch, it could be their fault, they were supposed to turn the lights off.  Me?  I wasn’t there.  I had nothing to do with it.  I was asleep in my bed.

I slipped under a sink and shifted a pile of empty glass racks in front of me, to make myself as invisible as I only hoped to be.  I tried to keep my breath measured, ignore the ache of my awkwardly positioned legs, to keep my hands still.  I had a view of the door to the dish room, but it was only from the legs down and it was partially obscured.

It was only a moment, but my heart raced.

And then I saw the slender, sweat-panted leg of who-could-only-be Maddy.  I sighed, and shifted out from under the sink.

She jumped.  “Jesus holy fuck,” she said holding her chest.  “I thought you were a roach.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you not to do this.”

“You tell me lots of things.”

“We need to get out of here now.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I couldn’t stand outside the cafeteria and wait for you any longer.  You need to get out of here.”

“How did you know I was in here?”

“I followed you down.  I knew you were gonna do something stupid,” she said.  “Even though I told you not to.”

“I can’t leave yet,” I said, as I began moving things around.  “I haven’t found anything.”

“Wally, you’re an idiot.  Someone’s gonna come.”

And as I was about to tell her that she should leave if she was so worried about getting caught, I tripped over a pile of dirty rags, at the bottom of which was a green colored shirt, worn from ware.

It was stained a dark purplish red.

Both of us saw it at the same time.  I reached down, picked the shirt up and unrolled it.  Unmistakably, it was a shirt we had both seen Mark often wear.

After a moment of stark, shocked silence, I said, “See?”

Maddy said nothing.  She only stared at the shirt I held in my hands, at the patch of red, trickling from the shoulder down the side.

“See?” I said again.  “I’m not crazy.”

She shook her head.  “Ok, we need to go,” she said.  “We need to go now and show this to someone.  Right now.”

I nodded.  And just as we were about to leave the room, a low growling voice grunted.

Both of us turned, startled as a roach by a light.  Standing before us was the gnarled-faced dishwasher.

“I think you better drop that,” he said to me, pointing to the shirt.

I was too scared at this point to do much of anything.

“I said,” he said, his voice louder, “I think you better drop that shirt you’re holding.”

Maddy let out a yelp.

The dishwasher eyed her crossly, “No reason to be making sounds like that, sweetheart.”

He took a couple of steps towards me.  “Drop that shirt, boy.  It’s not yours.  You can’t have it.”

I backed and backed and kept backing up until my waist bumped into metal.

“Drop it,” he said to me, louder.  “It’s not yours.”

The lights to the cafeteria flickered on.  We all jumped.  An RA who I’d never talked to but from talking to others knew as Rick came running.  “What’s going on here?” he yelled as he approached.

Before the dishwasher had a chance to say anything, I spoke up, “He’s a murderer!  He’s killed a student!”

The dishwasher looked horrorstricken, his eyes flared and his mouth winced.

Rick stopped in his tracks.  “What?”

“This dishwasher,” I said with a confidence in my voice I had never felt.  “He’s killed a boy named Mark Effing.”

Now it was the RA’s turn to look horrorstricken.  He turned to the dishwasher.  “Frank, what’s he talking about?”

“I haven’t the slightest clue,” he said suspiciously.

“He killed him in the cafeteria, covered it up, and I can prove it.  I found blood on the floor, I found a bloody rag in the dumpster, and now I’ve found this shirt.  It’s Mark’s and look at it.”  I held it up so Rick could see it.

“Liar!” the dishwasher said.  “All lies!”

“Mark Effing?” Rick said.  “He’s from my floor.”

“He’s dead,” I said.  And then pointing to the dishwasher, “And he killed him.”

“What are you talking about,” Rick said.

I spoke clearly, slowly, and triumphantly.  “This man killed Mark Effing.”

“No he didn’t,” Rick said.  “Mark’s not dead.”

I shook my head, “What?”

“Mark Effing,” Rick said.  “He’s not dead.  I just saw him a minute ago.”  He shook his head and shrugged.  “What I know is that Frank here called me in because he saw that someone had broken into the cafeteria, and then you two are rummaging through the dish room, and now you say someone who isn’t dead is.”  He paused for a second.  “What is this, a game?”

I shook my head.  I didn’t understand.  Mark was alive?  How was that possible?  Was he really?  Or maybe Rick was behind it all, doing his best now to play the blind man, to set us all up.  Or maybe he had already set us all up and we had already fallen in.

“Mark is alive?” I said softly.

Rick nodded.  “What’s going on here?”

“Prove it,” I said.

 

Which, naturally, he did.

* * * *

And that’s what happened.  Mark was alive, no one was dead, the dishwasher was innocent, and everything made sense.

Here’s how:

When Mark was missing, it was because he had gotten drunk and ended up passing out in a barn a few miles out of town.  How he got there, not even he knew.  What he knew is that he went to a bar, had a bit too much to drink, and he woke up to the hoarse neighing of a horse.

Oh and his cell ran out of battery.

The dishwasher confessed to the bloody rags, saying that he saw a kid crack his head on the table, and he helped the kid by getting him bandaged up and mopping up the mess.  I was still doubtful, at least until this fact was confirmed first by the videotape from a security camera and then by the kid himself, a mousy little boy named Meng, who said he had dropped a spoon under the table and then stood up too quickly, banging his head on the table and that the dishwasher had been nice enough to come to his aid.

He even had the gash to prove it.

Rick the RA scolded me, saying that it was pretty stupid to think someone could be killed the cafeteria without anyone knowing about it, what with the walls being so thin and, after all, it was under constant surveillance.

While I was being chastised, Maddy grabbed my hand and held onto it.  When it was over, she looked me in the eyes and said that, for a second, she had believed everything.  As far as I’m concerned, that was good enough in to make it all worth it, but she kissed me anyways.

What I still didn’t understand though was how Mark’s shirt ended up all bloodied in the dish room.  At least, I didn’t understand it until I asked Mark, who said that, in fact, it wasn’t blood, it was beet juice, and the reason it was in the dish room was because he had hooked up in there with a girl from the third floor named Laura a couple days ago.

Though this was confirmed by the security camera, Laura was adamant in her denial.

 

No charges were pressed.

Writer’s forum.

Hi everyone. I set up a web forum with a bulletin board kind of thing. If you want to change to that kind of a format, I think it might be a little better. Just go to here

http://www.elegantmistake.com/forum/

and register. then I’ll set up a conference for each writer who registers.

matt

a format change idea

Hey I was thinking, would you guys be interested in doing this in a bulletin board forum instead of a blog? I think it might facilitate more commentary and threaded dialogues etc. I would be willing to pay for the hosting if you peopple think you’re game for it.

Father’s Day

Here is the most recent essay I have been working on. It’s still kind of a draft. I hope you like it.

Father’s Day Draft II

        Shortly after recieving my economic stimulus check, I found myself going to the mall with my oldest brother. However, we were not going to just any old mall, with a bunch of crappy stores that sell overpriced clothes, knickknacks, and cell phones. My brother and I are fortunate enough to live with easy driving distance of the Oakbrook Shopping Center, the jewel in the crown of shopping malls in the Chicago suburbs. Oakbrook is an outside shopping mall that has nothing but the finest stores. They even have an Apple store. I have bought both of the Apples I own from that store, so you can imagine that I have nothing but good feelings toward this mall.
        My brother had his own shopping to do, so we parted ways shortly after walking in from the ample parking lot. The mall was crowded with people, shopping and milling. In celebration of Father’s day, there was an antique car show going on. The outside areas of the mall were filled with old cars and their old owners. I don’t care much about antique cars or father’s day. I work at an automotive repair shop, so I tend to view cars in terms of their potential to break down instead of their beauty and charm. As for father’s day, I don’t talk to my father much because both he and his second wife are jackasses. I did, however, stop to take a look at an old Packard with an in line eight cylinder engine, because a straight-eight is truly a thing of beauty beyond any American male’s capacity for cynicism.
        I threaded my way among old cars and people and eventually made it to my favorite store in the mall: Paradise Pen. I had come to look at Montblanc pens, and I could have gone to the Montblanc store, over by Macy’s but I prefer to spend my money at Paradise Pen because they are slightly less pretentious than the Montblanc store, and they let me play with the pens.
        Montblancs are very expensive, but they’re the best. I figured if I found one I liked and I really wanted it, I could always sell one of my Les Pauls in order to pay the credit card bill. Plus, I have a cheap knock-off of a Montblanc, and I wanted to see how it matched up against the real thing. I played with a number of pens while the clerk at the counter eyed me as if I might make a break for the door with them. Maybe it had happened before. I tried out a #146 (also known as the “Legrand”). Of course I had to try out a #149, which is the flagship of the Montblanc line. Those readers who know something about fine writing instruments may have an inkling of what one has to pay for a #149. For those of you who don’t, I’d tell you, but you would realize how foolish I am for even looking at one and you would stop reading. Like I said, they’re the best.
        The pen that really got me was the #145. Also known as “Hommage a Frederic Chopin,” this pen comes in a custom box with Chopin’s picture on it and a compact disk of his music. This pen has a slightly feminine quality to it. It is light and graceful and is made more beautiful by virtue of the fact that it is unadorned. All of the Montblancs of the Meisterstuck line are fairly plain and made from some kind of fancy plastic that is officially referred to as “precious resin.” But the other pens in the line are distinctively large in shape. The Chopin is more or less normal pen size. If you stuck this thing in somebody’s pen jar it would pretty much fit in with the rest them, at least until someone pulled it out to jot down a telephone number or something and became confused because the cap is threaded on and won’t just pull right off like the caps of lesser pens. It’s like the Chopin is the platonic ideal toward which every bic and paper mate yearns.
        As I played with the pen, turning it this way and that, examining it I might a sword or a violin bow, I began to sense that the man at the counter was growing tired of me. I may be impulsive, but I’m not going to spend a week’s salary on a pen, not at least without getting to play with it for a while first. They don’t have Montblancs with inc already in them at the store, but they do let you dip the nibs into small glasses of water and then write on a special pad of paper that reacts with the water and makes it look like ink. I was dipping my pen in the glass (for I already thought of it as mine) and writing over and over again “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” I had filled up a page and a half with quick brown foxes and I still couldn’t quite pull the trigger on this thing.
        The pen was wonderful, but I thought about the price as I watched my quick brown foxes slowly dry out and fade away. Did I really want to spend that much on a pen? What if I buy it and the price of gas goes up even more? I wouldn’t have enough money to fill my tank and drive to work. On the other hand, that would give me more time to sit at home and play with my new pen. I shouldn’t think it would be very difficult, wielding a writing instrument like that, to write any number of articles and novels in the space of a few weeks. If I bought this pen, my problems would mostly be over. The thing would probably pay for itself when the royalty checks started to show up in the mail. I could put the money back in the bank and then some. I’d probably make enough to quit renting and buy a house. With an Hommage a Frederic Chopin in my front shirt pocket, everything would be alright from here on in.
        Then it occurred to me that one of my dogs might get sick in the meantime. What then? I couldn’t very well pay my vet with a pen. He wants real money and no amount of “precious resin” is going to convince him otherwise. I couldn’t decide. The man was looking at me. I made an excuse and left.
        I milled around with the other shoppers for a while. I asked myself why it was important for me to have a Montblanc. Then it came to me: I had to have one because it’s the best and I always want to have the best of everything. There just doesn’t seem to be any point in having anything less than the absolute pinnacle. I threaded my way among the antique cars and thought about how my brothers are the same way I am. Neither of them would ever consider spending hundreds of dollars on a stupid pen, but that’s only because they aren’t into pens. My oldest brother, for example, got into beekeeping a few years ago, and now owns a massive array of expensive stainless steel equipment for extracting honey. He didn’t buy it just to have the shiniest stuff. He bought it because with the best equipment, you can get the most honey for the least work. It just seemed kind of pointless to buy anything but the best.
        If it hadn’t been fathers day, it might not have occurred to me that my brothers and I all get this from our father, to whom we never speak. Dad was always way too cheap to spring for the best of anything. Nevertheless there was always something in his mind that yearned toward perfection. I can remember interminable Saturdays spent cleaning the house when I was a child. It was my job to clean and vacuum a room called “the porch” which was not a porch, but a sort of indoor greenhouse with lots of windows and a black and white television set at one end.
        Every Saturday I would vacuum the living shit out of the porch. The entire floor was only about twenty feet by ten feet and it was tiled. But I would run the vacuum over it like a dirt obsessed maniac because no matter how clean I got that floor, my old man would look it over and find some mistake I had made. On one occasion, I remember calling him in for an inspection and watching while he sullenly the room over. Finally he came over to me and held out his hand. In his palm were three flakes of what looked to be dried up leaf fragments. Each of these was approximately one millimeter in size. “Do it again,” he said, disapprovingly.
        As I remembered these things, I realized that it had been my father’s purpose in life to turn his sons into anal-retentive lunatics and then unleash them upon society. I don’t know why he should want to do this or what malign purpose it might ultimately serve, and I don’t much care.
         Eventually, I met up with my brother at a restaurant called Wildfire. We had appletinis. He showed me a silver charm bracelet he bought at Tiffany’s for his wife. Then we had some tortilla chips with a spinach dip and went home.
        So I didn’t buy the pen. But I know that someday soon I will drive back to the Oakbrook Shopping Center. I will walk into the pen store with my head high and checkbook in hand. And after that, when I have my very own Montblanc pen, I think everything is going to be alright from then on.