A Short History of Deception

I'm back. This is the start of a longer thing I'm working on. Blogger won't let me use bolds, italics, and occasionally tabs, so it may be a little confusing. I also promise that his will take on a more narrative quality later on, but for now, I look forward to your comments. The basic idea is that this will work as a history, with two witnesses and commentators telling the story, and with some primary sources interspersed throughout.

A History of Deception

You and I, tempted by the promise of a different life
Time has fled, there’s a constant battle runnin’ through my head.
-Richard Thompson

Jen

I knew that something was wrong with Stephen when his calls began to come regularly and started to write me letters again. When first left home, he wrote once a week for several months, then stopped with the explanation that life was going well. I didn’t hear from him for three years. Then, as if he had never stopped, one of those thick envelopes with two too many stamps arrived in my box. His characteristic scrawl leaned all over the front of the envelope. Inside, the familiar malaise-filled letter and six or seven poems that could have been worthwhile if he ever cared to really work on them.

This occurred before that dreadful business in Scotland, about which many claim to know. Suffice to say that I might have paid a little more attention to what was between the lines if I had been in Sacramento. As it was, it surprised me that he had even found my new address.

- - -

Yes, I knew Stephen Baker when we were younger, and then a bit longer. One might describe him as a contradiction, but that would be too trite. I prefer the image of a pendulum—swinging back and forth between two poles but never resting in the middle. On one end, the life of the mind; he could be intellectually brilliant when he wanted to be. On the other, a sordid, drunken, shell of an animal that he unsuccessfully tried to hide.

Of course, when a pendulum stops swinging and rests, it is useless. Personally, I think he began to unwind when he came to believe that he needed to maintain some equilibrium. In doing so, he lost himself. He did not realize that there is as much equilibrium in motion—what Bergson calls duration—as in stasis. It was that very motion that individualized him. All of this will become apparent as events unfold.

Physically, he is an attractive man, though not so much so as to define him entirely. Let us begin with the basics: The last time I saw him he was just over six feet tall and 180 pounds, dark hair shortly cropped; thin expressive lips. Small hands, roughly calloused with feet just as small and skinny legs from which began to lose hair at the age of seventeen. A fairly toned body made possible by exercise in which he would fanatically participate until interrupted by the illnesses that frequently struck him. I wasn’t more attracted to him than anyone else, but I could certainly see the appeal.

His demeanor is more difficult to pin down. He could (and often did) charm the pants off nearly anyone. He could also be (and frequently was) one of the grumpiest, crankiest, most cantankerous people you could ever have the misfortune to meet. He wanted to be alone; he hated to be alone. He could justify the most obvious egotism with a queer rationality, and then turn around and commit the most stunning acts of generosity, which he labored to keep unseen. Everything right one minute and everything wrong the next. I imagine that to this day he persists in declaring his hatred of driving while simultaneously refusing to allow anyone else to sit behind the wheel. He could engage in remarkable stretches of self-discipline, feverishly working on something for weeks and ignoring any distractions. Other times, the merest excuse would have him out with a drink in one hand, a woman in the other, and raving about the incoherence of all humanity by the end of the night.

“I am perfectly aware of, and willing to acknowledge, these flaws,” he once said to me after I presented him with a more tactful reproduction of the list above, “but I do not want to be reminded of them.”

That is really what it comes down to: Stephen didn’t want to be reminded…of anything. So imagine, then, the ensuing chaos when he fell in Love with a woman whom he sometimes referred to as his Alarm Clock.

- - -

Derek

The first thing you’ve got to know about Steve is that he’s a very smart guy who loves to fuck very dumb girls. That’s the crux of the problem right there. That and the fact that he wants to believe, at least at first, that these very dumb girls have a modicum of intelligence. I think he confused the word "slut” with “freethinker,” but you probably shouldn’t put that in the book.

Look, here’s what you’ve really got to know no matter what anyone else says about him. Steve always tried to see the best in his women for as long as he could. He would meet a girl while he was out, bring her home, and the next day he would rave about “the conversation.”

“Derek,” he’d say, “we actually talked and it was great. She could actually keep up. I never meet girls that can keep up, that are really interested in things.”

This was when he was sober. When his mind was really working, it was hard for anyone to keep up. But when he was out he was always hammered, and when he was hammered, he had a very average intelligence and extraordinary confidence. Anyone could get Steve when he was hammered, and to be frank, he could be more likeable if you were meeting him for the first time. More laid back, less dismissive, much more patient. In most respects he was a normal guy, and the few quirks he kept seemed to make him an attractive individual.

- - -

The two other guys we lived with in those days were always shocked at how many girls he brought back.

“He doesn’t even like people,” Cal said.

“I know he takes what he can get,” said John, “but he’s not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel. All he does is read all day. What gives?”

I could have told them now. Steve had a sense of purpose and could be gregarious in spite of his nature. When those two sides of him got hot, they alloyed.

Like the rest of us, nothing could ignite him more quickly than a woman.

A Short One Act Play

Posted here by P.B. Adams
Written by Sam Bivins (Who needs to pick up his invitation for Hungry Writers Fiction at Hotmail so he can post here himself. LOL)

In a small coffee shop, a MAN and a WOMAN are seated at a table, downstage right. The man has a visibly black cup of coffee, the woman a humorously oversized blended drink, which should be a very bright shade of pink. She gazes into his eyes rapturously, while he seems rather detached, aloof. There is no one else around save the BARISTA at the cash register, who remains silently watching upstage left. On the radio one can faintly hear a soulful acoustic guitarist, plaintively strumming away.

Man: In my experience, when people tell me they want to "talk," they usually have something to say. So go ahead, what is it?

Woman: I hope I'm not coming on too strong. I just thought that after last night, we should talk about the status of our relationship. It's not anything I want to say, just what I want to hear.

Man: Like what?

Woman: Oh, I don't know. I just have so many questions. Where do we go from here, I guess.

Man: Well, I would like to continue to see you.

Woman: Oh?

Man: Yes, but I refuse to take any initiative. I value my privacy, you understand.

Woman: Oh.

Man: All of this hinges on you. If you want to see me, YOU'LL have to call ME.

Woman, smiling: Well I can do that. I don't mind instigating things--

Man, continuing: --but you should know I never answer my telephone. I hate telephones.

Woman: But then how will I see you? How will we talk?

Man: I can be found every day from four to six in the Thunderbird Cafe, writing.

Woman: This is a bit more eccentricity than I'm used to, but I could handle meeting you there for a time--

Man: --however I hate to be disturbed while I'm writing. How will I finish my book if some pretty young thing interrupts me every other minute to tell me about her day? No, you can't call on me there.

Woman: Wow, I didn't realize you were so artistic. Excuse me a moment. (She leaves to use the restroom)

With a flourish, the MAN produces a pen and paper from his breast pocket and begins scribbling furiously, alternately writing lines and crossing them out, until at last he has finished and triumphantly smacks the table with the flat of his hand. The woman comes back.

Man: For you. (He hands her the paper)

Woman, reading aloud: Plants on water spring
From hope eternal,
Gizite pyramidal structures. (Pauses, ponders. Her face lights up)
Oh my God, that's so beautiful, where did you come up with that?

Man, angrily: From my heart, of course!

Woman: Sorry, so sorry. Where were we?

Man: When I could see you again.

Woman: Yes, when could I see you again?

Man, explosively: I don't know! I need space!

Woman, sorrowfully: Yes, I understand.

Man: I'm leaving now. Don't bother me anymore. (He stands up)

Woman: I feel so cold.

Man: Come by my aprtment this afternoon with a scarf, a bottle of wine, an egg salad sandwich, and your hair in a tight bun and perhaps I'll reconsider. (He exits through a door stage left)

The WOMAN sits at her table, a faraway look in her eye. The BARISTA comes over.

Barista: Anything I can get you, ma'am?

Woman: No...no, I don't think so. I should probably leave.

Barista: You should keep an eye on that one. He's a real talent. A keeper.

Woman: Yes, you're right. I know it. Farewell.

Barista: 'Bye now.

She walks out. The barista stands at the table, watching her as she, too, exits stage left. The lights fade to red, and he smiles and walks back to the counter, whistling. The music becomes louder until it drowns out his whistle. Then the stage turns black.

A Very Short Story

College happened to me recently, and I haven't had a lot of time to write. I'm posting this not because I think it's much good (though I like the basic idea), but because it is literally the first piece of fiction I've written in weeks. It's also the first thing I've ever written in the first person.

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She’s waiting on my right, her face etched in shadows that deepen the lines of her face and lend prominence to her diminutive nose. Now she steps fully into the light and I can remember her in all her beauty from when I saw her last night. She begins to speak, staring directly at me. Yes, she’s speaking to me. There’s no other possible explanation. To forget me would be impossible; we had such a connection last night. Rich in timbre, I let her voice wash over me. It’s such a visceral thing.

Then she turns away. Such a flighty girl—can’t make up her mind. One man here, another there, me in the middle and on again.

The man next to me is talking about her. He wants me to hear him. “I had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign language,” he says, “and I’m not sure I approve. It’s the sort of think that can only broaden a girl’s mind.” That bastard. He doesn’t respect her at all, not the way I do. She left without hearing it, but she’ll be back, I’m sure of it. I’m irresistible. Everyone she talks to is irresistible. We keep her coming back into the lights, again and again and again.

It’s been ten minutes and she’s still gone. Another man loves her too, and he can get so close to her. Physically close, I mean. You can’t get as close as we got last night. We had a connection, an almost visceral link that bound us to one another. I could feel it in her eyes. They can speak to one another now, but I can look at her; reach through her eyes beyond the mask and tell her what I’m feeling. Sympathy, emotion, approval—no man down there can offer her that. He can only do what he’s told, but I am a man of infinite variety.

She’s out again, wearing her mask for him. Behind it, she’s waiting for me. I’ll talk to her after it’s all over. Look—she speaks the words to him, but she faces me dead on. Those eyes—aimed at me. Those gestures—for me alone. The lights are on her from above. She’s not lit up for him, she’s lit so I can more clearly see what I’m meant to. She loves me, she says. She kisses him, but as an extension of myself.

I’ll meet you after all this is over, I mouth silently, and she pretends not to hear. I know the message got across. There’s a bounce in her step as she exits stage left.

Cabin in the Woods

Ed’s truck was encountering a bit of difficulty on the rutted gravel road leading into the cabin. The wheels were spinning pointlessly into the deep ruts where the ground was still damp from the spring rains, and the truck wouldn’t move. He wished at that moment that he had not traded in his father’s four wheel drive, the ancient blue ford, in for this sleek, low Nissan and rubbed his brow in resignation.

“We should have walked in,” he said to the woman in the passenger seat. “I knew we wouldn’t make it through in this thing.”

Anita frowned. “Well, why don’t we just walk in from here? Someone will have to pull us out either way.” They had been together for six months, and this was their first vacation together. Not a nature-lover, she had wanted a weekend in Carmel, but Ed had a hankering to visit the cabin. His father had died three years ago, leaving the cabin to him, but he had never taken the time to go up. The last time he’d seen the place had been at the age of nine, twenty-two years ago. Insisting that the little house in the woods was as nice as he remembered it, he had convinced her that a night on the beautiful five acres of dense woods and lush meadow would be a more meaningful experience than spending a weekend in a posh hotel room near the ocean.

“You’re right,” he said, “we might as well walk” and he opened the door gently, then stepped out onto the gravel road that curved gently for another quarter mile before it reached his father’s—no, his—cabin. The day was clear and bright, and the sun shone through the trees, casting dancing shadows on the land below. Just as Ed remembered from his childhood, everything around him was tinted green, like he was standing next to a stained glass window.
They started walking down the road, their shoes crunching the gravel beneath their feet, and they fell into a rhythmic walk--step, crunch; step crunch. As they walked, Anita a few steps behind him, Ed wondered why he had brought her. Maybe it would have been better if he had made the first trip up on his own. Sure, it seemed like a good idea to spend a day in the wilderness together, warming each other in the cool night to come, but he hadn’t counted on the feelings he had for this place.

He felt like Anita was weighing him down. Not that she was actually doing anything wrong, he admitted silently, but she talked incessantly. Ordinarily he didn’t mind this tendency towards loquacity; in fact, her formidable intelligence and eloquence were what most attracted him to her. But this mindless prattle of Oh look, there’s a squirrel, are there deer here, oh look at the acorns, I’ve never seen an acorn before, grated on his nerves. Ed had a feel for the land, and he didn’t want every detail he was already aware of to be described to him in full. Besides the cabin was coming into view, and as it did, the flood of old memories surged through his mind. There were times when a man needed to hear nothing more than the wind rustling through the leaves unmolested by human chatter, Walking on your father’s land for the first time since he died was just such a time.

“Oh God, Ed, look at the meadow! Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked. They had almost reached the end of the road. The cabin was in sight and the meadow of long, golden grass lay next to it, just as he remembered. It was beautiful, the way the sunlight and shadows gilded the grass with light, the sharp contrast between the meadow and the forest beyond, but his eyes were fixed on the cabin. Something is different, he thought. This is not the way it was. He picked up his pace, the rhythm of the sounds of the gravel speeding up under his boots.

“Slow down, Ed,” Anita said, “I can’t walk that fast in these shoes.”

He pretended not to hear her. It was her own fault for wearing worthless, impracticable, fashionable shoes to the mountains. Some thirty feet ahead of her when he reached the cabin, he put his hand out to touch the walls. They were bare. When he was younger, and his father had first bought the place, they had come up together and decorated the outside walls with old farm tools, antlers and rusted car rims. The walls had been covered with them in the creation of an entirely rustic theme that was one of his earliest memories. All of that was gone.
“I can’t believe it,” he said aloud. “It’s not here.”

“What’s not here?”

“The walls. The wheels. Someone took all the old rims off the walls.” He strode over to the old pile of firewood that lay near the shed, perpetually unused for all those years. “They even took my hatchet,” he snarled. “My dad gave me that hatchet the first time we came up here, so I could help him cut the firewood. Why would anyone want that?”

“It looks, fine, Ed. All that sounds kind of tacky if you ask me.”

He whirled on her. “What do you know about it? Someone stole it all. They stole my memories.” Before she opened her mouth, he only felt sadness. Now the latent anger he held at bay rose in his voice. “Just shut up, will you. I can’t believe this. You don’t know a damn thing about this place. Just shut up.”

This last was said with such vehemence that tears sprang to her eyes. There she is, always crying, he thought. If I ever get the least bit harsh, that’s the only way she ever reacts. Jesus Christ, it’s so manipulative. “C’mon, stop that,” he said with disgust. “I’m going inside to see if anything’s left.”

The door was slightly ajar, and Ed knew nothing would be behind it. Old and chipping paint, the door would have been easy for someone to break open. But he hadn’t counted on the utter emptiness that lay behind it.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, while Anita composed herself on the porch. Everything had been stripped. The old paintings of the poker dogs on the walls were gone. So was the old Franklin stove in the kitchen. The bed had been hauled out, as had the unsightly yellow sofa. Those bastards. They took everything but the rat shit. He walked into the bathroom. Even the toilet and shower head had been removed, the toilet torn brutally from its base, the showerhead neatly unscrewed. They’d taken those, too.

“Christ!” he yelled. “The bastards stole everything!”

“What?” Anita stepped inside. “Oh my God, Ed. You told me it would be comfortable here. There’s not even a bed to sleep in, just rat—“ and instead of saying the word that came to mind, she scrunched up her delicate nose in a look of sheer disgust.

He got that look in his eye, the one that told her he was terribly angry at something and would assuage it by being as nasty to her as he could. “Thank you very much, Ms. Obvious. Perhaps you’d like to clean the rat—“ he scrunched his much larger nose in mockery “--up.”

“Stop it, Ed. I can’t help this. It’s certainly not my fault.”

“I suppose it’s mine, is it? Well suppose you just be quiet. They took everything I can remember.”

She bit her lower lip, while he walked into what had once been the bedroom and slammed the door, the sound of it startling her. Something struck him; the last vestige of some forgotten memory, and he reached up onto the uppermost shelf of the closet and felt around with his hands.

There it was. He had found it, and grasping the oblong object with one hand, the glossy paper with another, he brought them down and stared in amazement. How could they have possibly missed this? In his right hand was his father’s shotgun, and in his left a photo of Ed next to his old man, taken before their last quail hunt. Sliding the picture carefully into his pocket, he caressed the long, smooth barrel and said in wonder, “I can’t believe it. They left Dad’s old shotgun. Anita, c’mere!”

She entered the room to find him cradling the gun as if it were a baby in his arms. “What are you doing with a gun?” she practically yelped.

“Whoever stole the rest of the stuff forgot this,” he said.

“Of all the things they should have taken…”

“What do you mean?” he asked incredulously. “This is my father’s shotgun. Do you have any idea how old this thing is?”

“You know I hate guns. So many people die because of those things.”

“So don’t shoot it. At least I still have on reminder of my father and me here.”

“And what sort of significance is attached to this hunk of metal?”

“For your information, my dad used to take me and my brother quail hunting in the woods. He never let us shoot the gun, though. He said he’d give it to me when I had a son of my own.” He paused. “Of course, it’s too late for that. But he would have you know. He was a good man, never went back on his word.”

By the time he finished, his voice was so tender that she was visibly moved. “I wish I could have met him,” she said. “Why haven’t you ever talked about him before?”

“There’s just some things you don’t talk about, especially to a woman who hates guns. But I’d like to give it to my own son, when I have one. It’s a hell of a piece. Look!” He sighted down the barrel out the window. The day was exceedingly bright, and the sun shone directly through the window, lighting it up with its dazzling rays.

“Don’t point that,” she said. “You’re making me nervous. Just put it down.”

“C’mon,” he said. “I bet there’s some quail out there right now. Great big bobs with the whitest feathers on their chests you’ll ever live to see.”

“I told you, I don’t like guns.” A hint of hysteria hovered in her voice.

“It’s alright. Dad never left this thing loaded. He was adamant about that. I couldn’t shoot a quail if I wanted to.”

“Just put it down, Ed! Just put it down!” she shrieked.

He quickly lowered the gun. “I was just teasing, Anita. Man-alive, you don’t have to get so worked up. I wasn’t going to shoot the thing even if I could. Finding it made things a little better around here, that’s all.”

Her eyes darting nervously like a skittish deer, she took a deep breath, then two. “It’s alright. I’m glad you’re happier than when we first got here. But can you please put that thing away? In the truck, maybe?”

“Sure, if it bothers you that much,” he said. “I’ll go get the sleeping bag, too. We may have to sleep here if I can’t find cell phone reception.”

“If you get any, call a tow truck immediately. I can’t bear this place. We should have gone to Carmel.”

He snorted in disgust, and walked past her. Stopping at the front porch, he took out the picture again and looked around. Yeah, he’d get the place fixed up. A few weekends of work would be all it would take. He’d do it alone, though. Anita had no place up here. This was his domain. He could see it in his mind, some old rims and farm tools mounted on the walls again. Between the picture and his mind, he’d get it close to what it was.

He stepped off the porch and started toward the truck, replacing the picture in his hand with a cell phone. About halfway down the road, he got a few bars, and called Triple A. They’d be there in a jiff, they said. Fine by him. He reached the truck and unlocked the door, opened it, and placed the gun behind the seat. It sure was a good-looking thing. Shutting the door, he started back up the road, but deep in the trees there was a sort of cooing, and his eyes darted towards the sound. A dark bird shot out of the oaks and into the sky. On its chest he could just make out a small patch of pure white feathers.