Author Archives: Jerry

Now There’s a sport I never thought of…

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There are four players on the rather small court, two teams of two. They are on bicycles that have been specially modified for the event. Riders may not touch the floor, and they may not kick the ball. Instead, they propel the ball with quick flicks of the front wheel while all their weight is on the back. These guys can hit it hard. Like hockey, you are allowed to catch the ball, but you must immediately drop it straight down.

The game requires remarkable amounts of skill. Players move forward, backward, and they stand on either wheel. They hop the bikes, spin and twirl, and generally put on X-game performances, but without the arbitrary judging. It is an actual sport, by my stringent definition. (No judges, scoring is significant, scoring is constantly a possibility.)

Apparently, the sport has been around a long time. Right now at the Little Café Near Home a documentary is playing, honoring a team who started back in the black and white era (also known as the communist era, but for different reasons), and today, beer bellies and all, they’re still mighty damn good. They have trophies, medals, and awards out the wazoo. Shelves and shelves of them.

OK, the documentary just showed them getting the gold in Sydney. I think it did, anyway. If that’s the case, it is yet one more beef I have against American olympic coverage. There are olympic sports that look cool that I didn’t even know about? I look forward to the day when each channel bids to show a particular event, rather than the olympics as a whole. By not locking up the entire games with a single provider, obscure channels would have a chance to carve a niche for themselves showing events the big boys could never afford to show. NBC can pay a billion dollars for figure skating, while the outdoor network picks up biathalon cheap and NBC learns the hard way that figure skating is not a sport. That, my friends, is the free market, and under that system you would be able to watch the events you like. Somewhere.

Thanks!

Bar 100

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A hundred bars in four countries over the course of a year and a half is hardly an astonishing accomplishment; I’m sure there are those who have dwarfed that figure without even trying. I’m not terribly motivated to inflate the number; there are times when weeks have elapsed without me undergoing the grand adventure of breaking in a new place. I have my principles, and I have places I belong.

For the record, this was not the first time I’d been to the beer garden at Letná (rhymes with met yah), but it was the first time since the Bars of the World Tour officially started.

Letná is a park on the hilltop on the steep side of the river. It is in full bloom right now, as the plants jump into summer with gusto. It is not just the vegetation that responds this way, the population of the city comes out in force on those first few beautiful days that tell you that summer is here, and mother nature isn’t just fooling you this time. As this is the Czech Republic, an important part of enjoying any day is having a nice beer.

The line at the beer window moves quickly, and even on crowded days there is room among the hundred-plus picnic tables arrayed along the hilltop, sheltered by flowering trees. The breeze brought with it a slight chill, and there was constant danger of flower petals falling in one’s beer, but those are the hazards one must overcome to survive in a place like this.

There are dogs everywhere, running and playing among the picnic tables, chasing one another and yapping happily. The number of cigarette butts on the ground around the tables is surprising, even for this city.

The view from up there is one of the best in Prague. (The best view is from the TV tower, because it is the only view that doesn’t have the TV tower in it. Remember the giant Iron babies?) The oldest part of the city lies below you, just across the Vltava, and you can see why this town is nicknamed the city of a hundred spires.

On the pathways people stream past: punk kids on skateboards; elderly couples with their little dogs; and long, graceful rollerbladers weaving between them. Many of those who stroll past are carrying beers, and that is no crime here. (Some of them would be surprised to learn it is a crime anywhere.)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a story that takes place on one of these benches. When I wrote the story it had been more than two years since I had been up there, but it was (almost) exactly as I remembered it. (I had forgotten about the plastic cups. There is another beer window in another hilltop park, where you leave a deposit and get to drink beer in a more civilized fashion. The story starts strong and builds an interesting character, but ends schmaltzy, as so many slice-of-life type stories do.

I did no writing while I was there; I write this from the Little Café Near Home, days after the fact. At the time, I did not think about the milestone that bar represented.

Unless an unlikely acting job materializes, I will be traveling soon to other countries to meet up with people who like going to bars. That is likely to inflate the numbers substantially.

Thanks!

Monster on a diet

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It wasn’t easy to do; there was some good stuff in there. It’s just that I wanted to start with the voice of the main character. I added some at the start of the now-first chapter, giving the style of prose I do best a workout right at the top. Now, three paragraphs in, the reader will either be saying, “All right, this guy can take me for a ride,” or she will be quite right to put the book aside. Before, readers had to hang with me a while before I gave them a compelling reason to do so.

I won’t submit the revised work for a couple of weeks at least; it needs time to gestate, and there are still some rough spots to smooth over. (I still want to work in a subtle promise that at least one major character that you will really like is going to die.) Additionally, I’m working up a new cover letter with more detail about the story. It seems I have been short-changing myself by trying to keep the description down to two or three sentences. I don’t even remember where I heard that advice, but I’m glad to hear from reliable sources that’s it’s just plain wrong.

I submitted an earlier draft of my cover letter to another Web site for constructive ridicule, but it’s looking like I missed out on the constructive part. I’d point you there, but the cover letter contains spoilers. If you really, really want to see it, let me know. The ridicule part may turn out to be pretty entertaining. We’ll see when the joke is sprung.

By the way, I would like to thank Jojo for her critique of the new opening. Thanks, Jojo!

Thanks!

It’s (almost) Heeere!

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I’ve got a story in the upcoming issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. They call it the July issue, despite the fact that there will be another issue out before July.

Here is an excerpt of a review of the issue:

Note: apparently there are other stories in the issue as well. Go figure. The review is protected by copyright, so I will only reproduce here the parts that have to do with meeeee meeee meeee.

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – July 2006 by Gordon Van Gelder (Ed.) (Spilogale, Inc. May 2006 / ) – Contents: *blah blah blah*

The July 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is another great one with all the stories getting a Very Good rating from me.

*snip*

The issue is rounded out by stories by new writers. “Memory of a Thing That Never Was” by Jerry Seeger is a nice little tale about a man recruited for a war against The Other. They are apparently aliens but there is more going on here in what makes for some good intrigue.

*snip*

Again, this is a magazine that you should be picking up.

So there you have it! I get a Very Good. So does everyone else, but that just means the magazine has high standards, and somehow I snuck in there. You know what you have to do, right? It’s a three-step process:
  1. buy an extraordinary number of copies of the magazine.
  2. write the editor and tell them how much you like the story by that new guy.
  3. promise you’ll subscribe if they run another of my stories (Note: please don’t sign the letter “Jerry’s Mom” or “Jerry’s credit counselor” or anything like that, or they might get the idea that you are not completely unbiased.)

The goal, of course, is to have their marketing boys say, “It’s uncanny! Sales are through the roof! The only possible explanation is this little story, Memory of a Thing That Never Was. We’ve got to get more of this guy!”

That’s what I’m shooting for, anyway.

The assistant editor who first rescued my story from the slush pile (the large stack of material that people send them even though they haven’t asked for it) will be publishing an interview with me on his blog simultaneous with the release of the magazine. I’ll put up a link so you can read my erudite drivel about things I have no business talking about.

I’m still working on getting the names of the production staff to give them a special thank-you, but I don’t want to pester the editorial staff at the magazine. Maybe there will be credits in the magazine itself.

Thanks!

Happy No Pants Day!

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No Pants day is here again. It’s turned out to be very easy for me to celebrate this year; in fact, it has required almost no deviation from my usual lifestyle.

We have reached a point where there are far more than 365.2422 things to dedicate a day to each year. This leaves us with three options: mount giant rocket motors on the planet to push it out away from the sun so we have more days in a year; attach giant rocket motors around the equator to speed up the earth’s rotation, shortening the days; or pick and choose just which thing we want to use each day to commemorate. The first two options are only quick-fizes, as people will keep on coming up with things like “Left Sock Theiver Day”, and either the Earth will be pushed out past the Oort cloud to accommodate or it will be spinning so fast we will fly right off.

No, in the end, this is not a problem for the engineers to solve.

Adding to the complication is the breed of holidays that do not occur on a regular 365.2422-day basis. The floaters. Easter is one, so is the Chinese new year. Also, No Pants Day. It’s the first Friday in May, so put all your cares away.

So I, only marginally aware of what day it is in most cases, stumbled into No Pants Day. Here’s how I celebrated: I got out of bed, made tea, sat in front of the computer, scratched myself, and “researched” web comics. Somewhere in the mid-afternoon I snorted, said, “Oh, yeah, No Pants Day” and took off the sweat pants I had been sleeping in the night before. I sat back down and continued what I was doing. During the course of the day, I was never twenty meters away from the place I woke up.

It was just like many other days, but this time I wasn’t wearing pants. Now that summer is here, there are likely to be many more unofficial no pants days.

To erase that horrifying image from you mind, I leave you with this song, composed just for this day. Since I am distributing it without permission, the least I can do is give you all the relevant info, so if you find the singer’s voice especially sweet or the writer’s words especially witty, you can look for them.

Singer: Sara Hamman
Songwriter: coulda sworn there was a separate songwriter credit before, but there’s no evidence of it now. Sara has just risen that much more in my estimation. This is a brilliant song. There are others available at the Official No Pants Day Site music page.

I Wish It Were No Pants Day
Click Sara’s face to play

(right-click her face to save the file)

The image is also used without permission, but she shore is purty. I mean, just look at those eyes. On top of that, her voice calls us all to pray at an altar made of carbon fiber composite, draped with silk, and bedecked with the first daffodils of spring. Just listen and tell me I’m wrong.

Thanks!

Crazy People and Happy People

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I’m not good at secrets, and I’m not good at organizing. I am the last person on earth you want to have organizing a surprise party. I’m sentimental enough to appreciate the surprise party, but really, I suck at getting it done.

A couple of days ago I got the word. fuego was coming back to town for his first anniversary. It is widely known that the lad is eight time zones away, setting up for some big movie or another. You can’t say no to the Schmoo brothers. Less known is that the movie has been pushed — production is still a week or two out. fuego is there, in the big wide southwestern US, but his thoughts are with his sweetie, so far away. He hatches a crazy plan. He wants to go back for a few days, to surprise his bride.

Cash is tight. The lad has a job coming up, but in the meantime resources are scarce. I was not there, mind, but here is my understanding of the conversation: “Uh, Mom, I was thinking…”

“Yes!”

Mom’s cool that way.

So before you can say “Uh, wha—?” my favorite brother is suspended by Bernoulli’s principle over the frosty Atlantic and it’s up to me to lure his bride to a meeting where she does not expect to find her husband. It was touch and go for a little while, as I was reluctant to lie outright, and I failed to make the event sound even the slightest bit interesting. She was ready to shine the whole adventure. Only the public exhibition of the latest Pirates cut got her there.

Thus it came to pass that I was sitting at a table across from my partially-concealed brother when MaK arrived. I waved to her and she headed our way. Then she saw him. She froze, and broke. It was one of those moments you feel lucky to witness, an honest moment when there is no pretense, no artifice, just joy.

She cried. He held her. I watched.

Crazy people, happy people, and me. It was a good afternoon.

Thanks!

Sometimes you just have to take a chance

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I just ordered one of today’s lunch specials here at U Kormidla. My near-worthless dictionary translated Vepřový vrabec as “Pork sparrow”. I ignored the little voice in the back of my head saying “if there’s no translation for that part of the pig, you probably don’t want to eat it” and decided to give it a try.

As I finished typing the above my meal arrived, and I can confirm that nothing on my plate bears even a fleeting resemblance to a songbird. Between the chunks of fat there are some nice morsels of meat, however, and piled up with the pickled cabbage and dense potato dumplings, they are quite tasty.

Thanks!

Merry SOS Day

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Our beloved May twoth holiday, SOS day, is also known as “The first twoth where nobody had a really good name.” SOS day is so named because SOS naturally follows Mayday.

So, in order to celebrate the fifth twoth of the year, let us all imagine we have been stranded on a deserted island for the day. It is a friendly island, and while your transceiver peeps out . . . – – – . . . you have a chance to save your own soul. Come on! The sun is warm, the breeze is, uh… breezy, and the azure water in the lagoon is bathtub-warm. Put your feet up and relax. Did I mention that this island has a refrigerator and a bookstore? And what tropical island would be complete without a blender?

Tell us about your SOS day!

Thanks!

Another Day in Casting

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I didn’t move the writing career forward today, but I still have acting to fall back on. I went to a cattle-call today for a small film that will be in production for a couple of months later this summer. This casting is different than any of the others I’ve been to – this one’s for an actual role in the film and I would be working a couple of weeks or more, rather than days. I was applicant 99, to give you an idea of what the odds are. There were four male roles possible, but I was clearly unqualified for two of them, and it would be a reach for one of the remainders. The last role, however, ex-pat retired war photographer hanging out in Prague, I think I have a good look for. I’ll be interesting to see if I get called back to read. In the end, they’ll probably want someone with more experience, but heck, you never know.

Surprisingly, one thing I did pull off well was the chit-chat. Even after the video camera was turned off I hung out and shot the breeze with the director, talking about life in San Diego and Mexico, travel, and bars in Montana. As we were walking back to the waiting room he said, “We’re a low-budget production, you realize.” “That’s fine,” I replied, “I’m a low-budget guy!” I may be reading too much into it, but I took that as a hopeful sign.

Which marks another difference this time around. Each of the other casting calls I dropped by, thinking “ah, what the heck, it’ll only take a few minutes, no big deal.” Each time I thought afterwards that I would not get a call. This time I find myself actually caring whether I get the gig or not. That can’t be good.

It was Graybeard who tipped me off to the opportunity, and after we were done with the casting I hung out with him and one of his bevy of ridiculously beautiful young lady friends. Gotta hand it to the old boy, he is a charmer and he’s not afraid to use it. We found a nearby café with a very nice atmosphere and settled in for a while, discussing this and that. With Graybeard the conversation never stays in the same place very long; you need mental springs and you just have to expect that few topics — or even sentences on your part — will be completed. Beautiful Lady Friend got bored and for a while I was in smile-and-nod mode, but things got interesting again when Graybeard started telling stories from his past.

It’s not my place to give too many details here, but I think it’s OK for me to mention that he has been to prison a time or three, sometimes for long stretches, and you don’t want to piss him off. I made a mental note not to hit on Beautiful Lady Friend (hence no worries about a more appropriate nickname), even after Graybeard mentioned she had no boyfriend. He wants that honor.

Which made it even more complicated when BLF left and Isolde arrived. (I have probably mentioned her before with a different nickname, but it would too much work to go look it up now.) Isolde used to date Graybeard, and they are still close enough to spend their time sniping at each other, just like old times. Isolde wanted to go to a movie, French with Czech subtitles. Graybeard did not want to see it as he knows no French or Czech, but out of sheer nobility I agreed to go to the movies with a pretty girl. The sacrifices I make. I missed some of the subtle elements of the plot, like what people said to each other, but still enjoyed the flick — despite the lack of scruffy, gray-bearded actors.

Thanks!

Well dip me in Yahoo and roll me in Google.

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It is time once again, members of the muddled masses, to ask the question, “just what the hell is everyone doing here?” While it is true that the occasional visitor does come here on purpose, many, many lost souls are tossed up on the shores of Muddled Island by a random correspondence between words typed into a search engine and words that appear here. There are a lot of words here at Muddled Ramblings, 200,000 or so, and the diligent robots at Google and Yahoo have cataloged each and every one.

Occasionally I will obfuscate a word by adding s p a c e s to prevent those same diligent robots from becoming attracted to this episode, so that future searches will continue to yield the desired page elsewhere in the Muddleverse. Also, I like saying obfuscate. Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate.

  • james bond silk banners – linked to the first episode in my James Bond adventure.
  • Haiku black hole – linked to an episode about my descent into (and emergence from) a black hole.
  • rock stacking in the desert – linked not to my page about rock stacking, but instead to my episode about NOT stacking rocks.
  • A Next Generation Junior High  S c h o o l G i r l  Idol in Japan – linked to the Observations category page, attracted primarily to my musings about the downside to being a  s c h o o l g i r l  in Japan.
  • goodbye amy – linked to an episode in which I said goodbye to many people, some of whom I will never see again.
  • white tigers and liberec – apparently they have some in their zoo up there. I’m more interested in the hockey team, although they were swiftly eliminated by the Beers this year.
  • team bowling games – mine is the best.
  • automatic counting chicken – hmm… that would go great next to my whistling squirrel. Surprisingly, Yahoo put me right at the top of the search results for this episode.
  • allright mr demille,i am ready for my close-up – linked to an episode about my first day of work on the upcoming blockbuster James and the Giant Explosive Device
  • speech writing sucks – that’s why you have assistants, Mr. Bush. I’ve lost track of what on this site attracted that link to this site.
  • supernatural subtitles download – linked to my episode about Cutey Honey Flash. The version I watched just had normal subtitles.
  • capt. kirk “valley of fire” buried – the top match for this phrase was a particularly salaciously-titled post-Las Vegas ramble.
  • “I like this bar” – brought a reader to a discussion of my first trip to the closest bar to where I know live.
  • giraffes as beast of burden – linked to the stories category page, where I talk about a story that is lost in the mists of time
  • cat heaving – yes, someone searched for that. This chapter one ranked fifth at Google for that phrase.
  • hot teacher sex nun pics face army – wow. Amazingly, the stories category page had all these things, but nothing that comes close to what I imagine this googler was looking for (although I wonder if the searcher had any idea either).
  • step-by-step information on laws of thermodynamics – I’d never thought of a natural law as a procedure before, but it is a natural segue to an episode about eggs.
  • scary squirrels and annoying neighbors game – of all the potential matches on this site, Google pointed this searcher to an episode about a shitty bar in Pacific beach
  • rock stacking in hawaii – I am not the only one to call anti-stackism to the attention of the world.
  • she has nice gams – Top match on Yahoo linked to the first episode of Feeding the Eels, which reminds me…
  • short film ideas bowling funny – all that and more can be found here in the Muddleverse!
  • what determines how drunk you get – I do! linked to an episode at a bar in Bozeman, Montana.
  • “p e e  for distance” – linked to a side discussion about how a man can measure his age.
  • The sun was shining brightly. It was a fine Sunday morning when the – seems like they typed out most of it anyway, not much point in searching. This fine Sunday morning was the top match, though.
  • trombone autumn leaves moan plunger – I would like to see a guest poem that uses this line. Anyone? Anyone?
  • bad  s e s t i n a – while not technically a  s e s t i n a, this poem caught the searcher’s eye.
  • brain vibrations – early morning – linked to an episode about a good morning in New Mexico
  • metaphor + skin + “my life as a fake” – linked to the main page, just about the only top match that wasn’t what the searcher was probably looking for.
  • teenage  n y m p h s – got an improbably high match with my new understanding of Japanese culture.
  • name of soap worn by teacher in movie scent of a woman – this might be the most useless piece of trivia ever! Linked to the Stories page, where there is talk of soap, and women, and movies, but not all at the same time.
  • a shot video that shows a pitcher then a scary person pops up and scars the crap out of anyone – Top Yahoo match linked to the Pirates! category page, where there is talk of a pitcher, and scars
  • american road trip cult map – So you can find nice cults to hang out with on your trip, I suppose.
  • d e l i c t i o n – I just coined the word and already the world is jumping on the bandwagon.

Of course, many, many people came by to learn the art of frying an egg, and the lyrics to a silly but violent anime theme song has become a big attraction. googli is popular among foreign searchers, and people coming here to find pictures (or pitchers) of ocelots regularly have their hopes dashed.

Thanks!

Piker Press Anniversary Issue

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Each year Piker Press puts out an anniversary issue, in which they take a trip back down memory lane, finding choice morsels from the the past. It’s a good chance to acquaint yourself with the many contributors over there. In the words of Senior Editor Alexandra Queen: “We traditionally run not neccessarily the best, but some of the most memorable articles, stories and comics from the past four years. Or sometimes we run the ones we haven’t thought about for a while. It’s less like the Oscars than like flipping through a family photo album.” I have been enjoying reading stories by some of the folks from before my time.

I was curious to see which of my pieces they might choose to run, if any. Last year they put Tin Can in the anniversary issue, which was a bit of a surprise but not an unpleasant one. It made me go back and look over the story and I discovered that I liked it more than I thought I did. I’ve even fixed it up a bit and submitted to another magazine that doesn’t mind doing reprints.

This time around I could think of a few articles that I thought would be anniversary-worthy, from the bittersweet celebration of life in Earthchuckle to the spooky Serpent to the downright silly Hell-Cricket. Well, I do have a piece in there this week, and once again the choice was a surprise. They are re-running Storm of the Century, the epic story of one man’s drive to salvation, and how he saved a quarter-tank of gas on the way.

OK, maybe ‘epic’ isn’t the right word. But it is fun, and I enjoyed reading it again. It was an experiment of sorts, trying a different narrative style and intentionally under-edited.

Makes me want to go write a short story…

Thanks!

I Murdered a Pot Tonight

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Let us all pause for a moment of silence, as we remember the pot.

It all started this afternoon when I went to a bar in my ‘hood that I had not visited before. I went in and sat down in a position that completely disrupted the place. It is a regulars bar, and apparently there is assigned seating. I plunked down and threw the entire joint into doubt and uncertainty. I did not stay long; they didn’t have food and I was one hungry pup. Still, it was beer on an empty stomach, and that’s never good. The Czech hockey championships were on, so I went to the Little Café Near Home – not renowned for their vittles but I enjoy watching hockey with the folks there. I had a snack there and resolved to have more when I got home.

Home I got, and while the larder is traditionally spare, I did have rice. Perfect! I put a pot on the stove with plenty of water, and then came in here to write about download day.

I forgot about the pot.

Time for bed, and luckily I had to pass through the kitchen to perform my evening cleansing rituals. I heard the hiss of the stove and looked over to see a pot, formerly lined with enamel, blackened on the bottom and the enamel on the sides of the pot slumping. I turned off the gas and now the apartment is filled with a smell reminiscent of burned popcorn. We’ll send a forensic team in tomorrow morning to fully assess the potworthiness of the vessel, but I expect it will be time for me to go pot shopping pretty soon.

1

Thanks!

Download Day

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I subscribe to eMusic.com, a damn fine way to load up on good tunes without ripping off the musicians. For fifteen bucks a month I can download sixty-five tracks, and I can feel good about it because the giant record label assholes don’t get squat. The right people get paid. And let’s face it, the big label’s sales are slumping not because of piracy but because the independent labels have done a better job moving with the times. Indy sales are up.

So today was download day. On what, out of the vast musical universe, did I blow my precious sixty-five? I’m glad you asked!

  • Johnny Cash, The Sun Sessions, Vol 1. – nothing left to say, except listen again to I Walk the Line, and listen to the Man in Black hum, slightly discordant, as he introduces the next refrain. Step back in awe.
  • Orchestral Works Of Liadov – Symphony Orchestra of Russia under Veronika Dudarova – still digging into Russian orchestral stuff. It’s a good trip.
  • Giggles in the Dark – Lesbians on Ecstacy – not sure what to make of this one yet. Riot Grrrl remixed. I think I like it.
  • The Time Of The Preacher by Johnny Cash– off the No Depression: What It Sounds Like Vol. 1 album, and way better than any other track on the disk. Johnny Cash goes Seattle and the result just plain rocks.
  • Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by godspeed you! black emperor – I can’t describe it, I just like it. Someone somewhere said ‘post-rock’, but I call it music.
  • Golden Ocean by 50 Foot Wave – After the debut EP, I have been waiting anxiously for more from these guys. I was not disappointed. This album rocks all over the place.

Good tunes, man, good tunes.

Thanks!

Episode 19: Nest of Vipers – Part 1

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Note: To read the entire story from the beginning click here.

I tried to ignore the feeling that there was a bulls-eye painted on my back as I inspected the doorway where Alice had been standing. The only reason to take her, I told myself, was to force me to do something I didn’t want to do. That meant whoever had done it wanted me alive, and I would be hearing from them eventually. I looked back at the door of The Bucket in time to see the man I had been speaking with hurry down the street. It wouldn’t be long before the cops arrived, and I wasn’t eager to be talking to them at the moment.

It didn’t look like Alice had made it easy for them; the scuffs on the sidewalk told a story of struggle. She had managed to run two strides before they wrapped her up and dragged her to a car. Near the curb I saw dark spots on the pavement. I hunched down and confirmed that it was blood, fresh but quickly blistering and blackening in the heat. I surveyed the windows looking down on the street. Someone must have seen something. I made a note to have Alice ask around and then stopped myself.

Someone had crossed a line. I wanted to find out who they were before they had a chance to contact me, so I could drop in on them before they were ready.

I turned my head one way and then the other as I regarded the scuff marks. One, from a smaller shoe, seemed to be more complex, as if created with intent. A hastily-drawn arrow, perhaps, or maybe the letter ‘F’. Possibly nothing at all; it’s easy for a person to see patterns even when there are none. If it was an arrow it pointed up the street away from the bar and towards downtown. If it was a letter, perhaps F for Fanutti? An E she didn’t have time to finish? I moved my foot along the lines, imagining that I was being dragged to a car, and just trying to stay in one place long enough to finish my message, without anyone realizing what I was doing.

I heard a siren in the distance. Time to go. I turned and walked briskly away from the scene, by coincidence in the direction of the arrow, if that’s what it had been. I zigged and zagged a few blocks then bellied up to a phone. I pulled Cello’s card out of my pocket and regarded it grimly. This call could cost me. I threw a dime in and dialed.

The phone was answered almost before it rang. “Hendricks and Associates,” a competent female voice answered.

“Charles Lowell. Cello is expecting my call.”

“One moment.”

After somewhat more than a moment Cello came on the line. “Mr. Lowell. You have something for me?”

“Depends. Did you take her?”

“You have lost track of someone?”

“Yes. Did you take her?”

“I assume you wouldn’t bother to ask if it was Mrs. Fanutti you lost track of. Has something happened to your charming secretary?”

“Yes.”

“You put her in harm’s way?”

“…yes.”

“Most ungentlemanly, Mr. Lowell.” He hesitated. “I am not aware of anyone in my purview taking action against Miss Carruthers. I feel no need to coerce your actions.”

“Good.”

“It is likely that no matter who is holding her I could obtain Miss Carruthers’ release. I offer only because I admire the young lady. There are certain… ah… costs that I would incur, however. I think you already know what I would like in return. Shall I direct my people?”

“You already know who has her.”

He paused. “I have a theory.”

“They are not friends of yours.”

“No.”

“Give me an address. I’ll pay you back by hurting them as much as I possibly can.”

“An interesting proposition. Unfortunately, there are three problems: first, ‘as much as you can’ likely will prove to be very little, second, once they brush you aside they will have no reason to keep Miss Carruthers alive any longer, and finally if they find out how you got that address, it could cause me a great deal of difficulty.”

“Then give me the name of someone else who knows the address, and I’ll get it from him.”

“One way or another.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not your usual style, Mr. Lowell.”

“They crossed a line.”

“Hm. Did they cross the line, or did you? Are you responding this way because you blame yourself?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. Before you go charging off to your death, I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me Mrs. Fanutti’s whereabouts?”

“No.”

“You have not yet recovered the Blood of the Saint?”

I didn’t answer that.

He sighed. “I am going to help you, Mr. Lowell, because you are an important asset to me right now. Please remember that and try to remain one. It is the only thing keeping you alive. I have a name for you. When you speak with him, be aware that he has already saved your life once.”

Tune in next time for the conclusion of: Nest of Vipers!

Thanks!

Tired

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Today I worked on a story that has been rejected once. The changes weren’t big, but the thing does read a bit better now. It’s a little less cluttered; I think I was trying to fit a novella into a fairly long short story. A bit after lunchtime I repaired to bíl

Thanks!