CCLaP Weekender: August 8, 2014

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

August 8, 2014

New fiction by Bruce Douglas Reeves Photography by Todd Schlemmer Chicago literary events calendar August 8, 2014 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce FRIDAY, AUGUST 8

7pm Breakup Party

Quimby's Bookstore / 1854 W. North / Free quimbys.com Vice Versa Press presents an evening of zine creators talking about their most horrific breakup stories. Costumes encouraged.

7pm So You Wanna Be a Naked Girl?

Everyleigh Social Club / 939 W. Randolph / $20, 21+ nakedgirlsreading.com The burlesque spinoff show "Naked Girls Reading" presents its annual audience amateur competition. Participants get in free and are eligible for a $300 grand prize. $20 in advance, or higher at the door. PLEASE BE AWARE that this literary show's title is not ironic: gratuitous fullfrontal nudity will be on display all evening long.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 7pm Rebecca Makkai

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com The author reads from her new novel, The Hundred-Year House.

10pm Open Mic

Delphic Arts Center / 5340 W. Lawrence / $10 facebook.com/delphicarts A monthly late-night open mic for poetry, music, comedy and more.

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

enter.com/chicagocalendar]

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 4:30pm Michael Goldstein

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com The author reads from his newest book, Return of the Light, a contemporary political journalism piece disguised as a postapocalyptic science-fiction novel.

7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $7, 21+ slampapi.com International birthplace of the poetry slam. Hosted by Marc Smith.

7pm Asylum

Le Fleur de Lis / 301 E. 43rd / $10

lefleurdelischicago.com A weekly poetry showcase with live accompaniment by the band Verzatile.

MONDAY, AUGUST 11 8:30pm Open Mic

Kafein Espresso Bar / 1621 Chicago Ave., Evanston kafeincoffee.com Open mic with hosts Chris and Kirill.

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TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 7:30pm Story Club: Summer Lovin'

The James Hotel / 210 N. Rush / $10, 21+ storyclubchicago.com The popular reading series presents a special edition, in conjunction with The James Hotel, as part of their 2014 Cultural Collection.

Featuring Julie Danis, Michele Weldon, Julie Hill, as well as three open mic slots.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 6pm Rick Perlstein

Harold Washington Public Library / 400 S. State / Free chipublib.org The author discusses his new book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, in a conversation with Pulitzer-Prizewinning local journalist Garry Wills. Being held in the library's Cindy Pritzker Auditorium.

7pm Ellen Sussman

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com The author reads from her newest book, A Wedding in Provence.

7:30pm Second to None Zine presents Queer & Trans Chicago Voices

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com The popular local magazine presents an evening of readings by their contributors, including Kiam Marcelo Junio, NIC Kay, Jen Richards, Amina Ross, and Jakob VanLammeren.

9pm In One Ear

Heartland Cafe / 7000 N. Glenwood / $3, 18+ facebook.com/pages/In-One-Ear Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.

10pm Elizabeth's Crazy Little Thing

Phyllis Musical Inn / 1800 W. Division / Free, 21+ facebook.com/ElizabethsCrazyLittleThingPMI An open mic for poetry, music, comedy, performance and more.

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 6:30pm Daryl Brown

City Lit Books / 2523 N. Kedzie / Free citylitbooks.com The author (and James Brown's son) discusses his new book on the subject, Inside the Godfather.

To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line at

August 8, 2014 | 5

ORIGINAL FICTION

The debris of their marriage swirled around them, scraps from a carnival after the grounds had closed. Bent-cornered snapshots, curling calendars scrawled with forgotten dates, drawers sagging with bundled letters, shoeboxes bloated with picture postcards: they haunted Elfrida and Mason with insinuating odors from the past. Every day, every hour, it seemed, fragments from their life together blew against their legs, rustled against their aching chests, slapped them against the back of the head. Love, they’d discovered, collected debris, some of it tenderly decaying; some rotting at their feet.

THE WEDDI 6 | CCLaP Weekender

Photo: “Untitled,” by Chuck Patch [flickr.com/chuckp].

Used under the terms of his Creative Commons license.

ING PARTY

BY BRUCE DOUGLAS REEVES August 8, 2014 | 7

Mason was a worrier—always had been. He worried when he left Elfrida alone at home and when she drove to work. He worried that she didn’t exercise enough, that she’d develop breast cancer or a heart condition or diabetes. He also worried that when she did exercise she’d hurt herself.

He worried about his kids when they went to school or to the movies. He worried that their friends would corrupt their innocence. He worried that his son and daughter would discover that their father was not worthy of either respect or love. He worried that his friends would turn their backs on him, that they already talked among themselves about what a loser he was.

He worried about his health, that he was developing prostate cancer or heart disease. His doctors assured him that he was healthy, but he lay awake at night worrying, then worried that he wasn’t getting enough sleep. He tried to get to sleep with alcohol, then worried about his liver.

Now, Mason worried that Elfrida would wake up one day and realize that she’d never loved him. The main thing that Elfrida worried about was Mason’s worrying. He’d never been easy to live with, but she prided herself on her tolerance. Still, why couldn’t he relax, deal with life without agonizing over it? Elfrida and Mason had reached the point where every day they waded across minefields of questions.

Was this why Quentin and Lolly’s wedding was so important? The bearded, white-haired minister from the politically correct Oakland church who performed the ceremony beneath the crusty-barked Russian River redwoods might’ve been, Mason thought, a large-bellied Prospero ruling over an untamed isle: a beautiful, beguiling, yet terrifying shore on which he and Elfrida had crashed. Was naked, hairy Caliban lurking behind those variegated ferns or only his own fear of the future?

Elfrida knew when she walked into that redwood-beamed room for the wedding dinner that she still was attractive, even sexy, although she’d hit forty.

Thud! Thwak! So why’d she consume champagne faster than anybody else at their table? She saw herself becoming a manic creature, rewarding every remark, humorous or not, with throaty laughter and appreciative gestures, but she couldn’t stop herself. Did she even want to try?

Here they were among the redwoods, happily surrounded by nature, communing with it, you might say. Nothing like champagne to help you be one with nature. And, yet, it seemed that she was standing on the edge of a cliff, one of those crumbling precipices above the Pacific Ocean a few miles from this lodge. Was that Mason balancing beside her on this decaying bit of earth, or was she alone?

Later, she boogied with Quentin’s brothers and their L.A. friends. Well, why shouldn’t she? Quentin was Mason’s cousin—or something like that, she never could remember the precise connection—the brothers too, of course, so there was nothing wrong with having a little casual fun with them. It was expected.

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Dark red hair flying, emerald dress swirling around her hips, breasts quivering, wide mouth never closed, Elfrida watched herself giving an imitation of an almost young woman having one hell of a good time. She’d always been the prettiest girl at any party. Now, was she the prettiest middleaged woman at the party, the prettiest somewhat overweight, auburn-haired, married mother of two at the party?

A number of the wedding guests were staying at the lodge instead of driving back to San Francisco or L.A., so after Quentin and Lolly vanished into their hired limousine (en route to SFO and the Not-So-Virgin Islands, as the joke went), Quentin’s father invited them to his cabin for celebratory nightcaps. Elfrida and Mason stumbled through the redwood grove’s predatory shadows, past a rectangular pool that lay on its concrete table like a giant playing card, to the redwood cabin overlooking a dark slice of river.

Real wood, this cabin, inside and out, surrounded by real trees dropping real redwood needles, and a real damn river rushing between its earthen banks: it almost was too much nature. She wasn’t used to so much nature naturing all at once. You could get a nose bleed from all this fresh air and redwood dust.

Quentin’s parents drew them in with casual, seasoned charm. Elfrida perched on a stool at the corner bar, kicked aside her shoes, and asked August Bannister if he could find her a gin and tonic. With a tolerant smile, the sharpfeatured old man soon placed a tall glass on the counter beside her, ice cubes clanking conspiratorially among tiny bubbles.

She thanked him with a wink, displaying that old tendency to earthy vulgarity, tempered with not a little charm, that had first attracted Mason.

Like a courtesan of certain years, like one of the fading beauties in Colette’s stories of bittersweet romance, Elfrida now relied on her practiced charms, but even as she pulled them out she knew that they were threadbare and dated. If she wasn’t careful, she’d become an amusement instead of an enticement. If it wasn’t already too late.

A rush of young people soon crammed into the cabin, stretching its dusty redwood perimeters with excited gestures, easy enthusiasm, and hot bodies.

Too damn hot. Handsome Boyd, Quentin’s younger brother, who during dinner and dancing had prowled hungrily among the women, carried his Corgi under his arm.

“Let me hold her!” cried Elfrida, thrusting out a red-nailed hand.

“Careful, she’s a handicapped dog. She had a hip operation.”

Elfrida considered Boyd and his remark—Boyd, actually, more than his remark. He had inherited his father’s lean good looks and hypnotic eyes, but where had he got that sexy, wicked grin that flashed so lightly in his thoroughbred face? Surely not from his refined, rather austere, mother? And what about that hard little ass under those sleek wedding party pants? She might be past forty, but she could appreciate the shapely buttocks of a twentysomething male.

“Poor little bitch,” Elfrida muttered, shaking her head at the Corgi.

She clutched the squat, stubby-legged dog. Using Snookums as August 8, 2014 | 9

intermediary, she cross-examined beautiful Boyd, learning about the allfemale rock group, Ass and Tits, that he managed in Los Angeles.

“We’re the number one girl group in L.A. Got an album coming out next month.” As he talked, he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, revealing tanned, sinewy arms. The bastard didn’t play fair. She was sure he knew exactly what he was doing. “But if things don’t click, no sweat. I can go back to repairing Mercedes. A Mercedes mechanic can always work in L.A.” A calculatedly fascinated smile playing across her face, Elfrida reached for her glass, which somehow had migrated down the bar, lost her balance, and started to topple, stool and all, like a felled redwood, until bare-armed Boyd righted her again, without even spilling his own drink. She felt the heat of his young body, his youthful confidence. All very goddam natural, here among the redwoods.

“Just like the male,” she gurgled. “Keepin’ the female in line. But don’t you go thinking I’m one of your tits and asses.”

Even as she said all this, Elfrida wondered why the hell she was flirting with Boyd, who was, after all, fifteen years younger than she was. For that matter, would Mason even notice? And if he noticed would he give a damn?

And did she give a damn about him giving a damn? Was that why she was doing this or did she have another motive, ulterior, interior, exterior, whogave-a-damn-what-terior motive?

When narrow-hipped, carelessly seductive Boyd tried to retrieve Snookums, Elfrida refused to give up her hairy new friend. She focused on the cords of Boyd’s powerful neck, on the bulky chest muscles under his opencollared white shirt, but directed her words to the dog: “You don’t wanna go with him, do you, pooch? You wanna stay with ‘Frida!” She pushed her face close to Snookums, almost rubbing damp noses, until the dog turned her little head. “’Frida’s gonna teach you how to be a Super Bitch, sexpot and mother, daytime boss and nighttime geisha, keep everybody happy. Shouldn’t be hard even for a little bitch like you!”

She heard the thickness in her speech, but still was able to string words and phrases into sentences. After all, her way with language had helped her leapfrog over anyone who challenged her ascent at Wiegand’s, and look where she was now!

Where the hell was she?

In a corner office with a vice president title on the door, that’s where she was, only not at this moment. Right now, she was on the Russian River, holding this invalid dog in her big soft arms, gazing at this beautiful young man with the shirt-stretching chest and impatient hands. But so what? That was what she had to explain: to Snookums or her master, or maybe to Mason.

She wasn’t sure, exactly, but it definitely, probably, was important. And all these thoughts and partial thoughts flickered through her mind and she smiled brightly, as if she were completely aware of what she was doing and what everybody else was up to, as well. Here among the sky-scratching, dustscattering redwoods.

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Boyd rescued the floppy-eared bitch from Elfrida’s comfortable, freckled arms.

“How can you steal Snookums from me?” she protested. “I was gonna tell her about marryin’ a nice Berkeley grad, buyin’ a nice three-story house in a nice San Francisco neighborhood, and producin’ a coupla nice smart-ass kids. All so goddam nice.”

“Gotta go.”

With his dog and a couple of buddies, Boyd backed his round butt out the door, saluting Mason and blowing a kiss to Elfrida. What right did that young man have to act so cavalier? Just because he was young and studly— was that a word: studly?—did that boy think she was hot for him, when she was definitely and absolutely without-a-damn-doubt married? Did he? She’d lost track of the question she was posing to herself, but knew she was right to be indignant, even offended, completely on target, as they said in meetings at Wiegand’s.

The diminished group slowly consumed another round of drinks, Mae and August Bannister presiding like the Lord and Lady of an elegantly rustic Manor. Elfrida liked Quentin’s parents. She didn’t think they meant to condescend to her. That was just their manner, the manner of the Manor. She understood and didn’t take offense.

“Why do kids today bother to get married?” Elfrida shifted her breasts in her half-bra under the deep “V” of her neckline. “Quentin and Lolly’ve lived together for years. They’re not gonna have any surprises for each other.”

Of course, a lot of couples now didn’t get married, but that was another issue and she wasn’t gonna worry about unwed mothers or any of that shit, now. She thought enough about that problem and related problems when she was at Wiegand’s and over at the Mission Street counseling center. (And didn’t that prove she was a good person? Five hours a week back in the concrete jungle, she volunteered, helping the poor and virtuous, those sad women who were virtuous because they were poor. Would she do that if she weren’t a good human being?)

Drifting sideways, Elfrida lurched toward the open hearth flagstone fireplace. Mason caught her before she thrust a stockinged foot into the glowing red and white ashes.

“What happened?” She peered through a private haze past Mason’s moon face to Quentin’s white-haired dad. “We had our life plan! We followed it, everything worked out. What happened?”

Mae and August Bannister made noises intended to suggest that they’d heard nothing but sympathized with whatever it was they hadn’t heard.

“We found an affordable apartment in a good neighborhood. Right there in the City, when everybody said it was impossible. Worked hard, saved money.

You should’ve seen our little apartment, tiny, but tasteful. A masterpiece. And I worked full-time, even wrote articles for professional journals, god help me: a one-legged juggler on a high wire, keepin’ everything movin’ at once.”

“My dear,” began Mae Bannister, a cool hand on Elfrida’s hot arm, but August 8, 2014 | 11

Elfrida took this as encouragement.

“Then we had the baby, the first one. And I kept hopping up and down and jugglin’ faster. We started looking for a house. A Victorian we’d fix up ourselves. Some still weren’t too pricey back then. In shitty condition, but with potential! And I found one, didn’t I, Mason?”

He nodded, reaching for her, but she evaded his grasp.

“Balanced on its hill like good old Queen Mary, or like one of her hats in those antique newsreels, tall and stately and above changing fashions. A home to last for the rest of our lives...whatever that meant. Means. Wasn’t it a perfect find, Mason?”

Mason nodded. “Perfect.”

Drops of perspiration slid down his face into his moustache. His jaw and cheeks where he shaved were rough, but Elfrida always insisted that the uneven texture of his skin was masculine, sexy.

“And when Mason wanted to stop working and paint, didn’t I cooperate?

When he’d had his fill of laboring for other people and wanted to prove himself, didn’t I let him do his thing? Christ, I was so goddam understanding!

You know what I was? Supportive!”

He made pictures in which people didn’t look at one another: large, vivid paintings crowded with nonobjective shapes and shadowed faces. He painted all day in their tall, narrow house near the hillside park and then, when he remembered, threw together dinner. (She picked up Carl and Janie from the sitter on the way home.) Sometimes, he sent out for a pizza or ribs. They knew a place that made ribs, good and spicy hot, that they couldn’t resist, despite frequent resolutions to switch to a lower fat, less carcinogenic diet.

On the surface, they were intelligent and cool, the most rational couple they knew, which may have said something about their circle of acquaintances.

“Why don’t you show their eyes?” she asked once, as she studied a new painting. “Or bring them out of the shadows? Why not let them look out, bold, unafraid?” Then she smiled: “Sorry. I shouldn’t try to change you.”

Maybe she’d stopped believing that love transcends all, but silently was betting that it did.

As Personnel Director of Wiegand’s Department Store, Elfrida made more money than any woman she knew, certainly more than high school friends who’d become teachers and dental assistants. Still, her work often pained her: particularly interviewing the impatient girls and nervous widows who wanted to be saleswomen while they waited for husbands or death, or anxious men and women looking for an occupation to carry them along until something better offered itself, until their spouses won degrees or learned computer programming, until they completed night school, until the stars faded from their damp, circled eyes.

Who was she, Elfrida wondered on long afternoons behind her veneered desk, to judge these women—or the men who applied for jobs, for that 12 | CCLaP Weekender

matter—or allow or deny them the paychecks that equal life? Elfrida suffered in her work, but it was a victory, and she needed a victory.

“My shoes!”

Elfrida wobbled, one hand clutching the cabin’s redwood doorframe, her ankles too frail to support her lush figure. Mae Bannister found the highheeled sandals near the bar and presented them to Mason, holding them out with thin fingers as if they were a prize.

“Such pretty shoes,” she said.

Snatching the shoes from Mason, Elfrida stumbled through the open door, colliding with the redwood railing. Blue-black shadows obliterated her face and arms, while the rest of her glowed beneath waterfalls of light pouring from the cabin door and window.

“Are you going to be all right?”

August Bannister’s deep voice rumbled with a delicate mixture of concern for Elfrida and Mason’s well-being and a reluctance to suggest that everything wasn’t as it should be.

“Sure,” Mason said, helping Elfrida jam her high-arched foot into the tangle of straps. “Thanks for an enjoyable wedding, evening, night.”

“See you at brunch?” asked Quentin’s mother. “After a good night’s sleep?”

“Yeah,” said Mason. “Maybe. Hopefully.”

The door closed, leaving him outside with the intimate stranger who was his wife.

Elfrida lurched recklessly down the redwood steps, hitching up her skirt as if she intended to expose her pantyhose-sheathed thighs to the moon.

Once, she was not so out of harmony with...with what? Nature? The world?

Her own life?

Together, husband and wife waded into the meandering stream of the redwood-needle-strewn driveway. Stars hung above silhouetted trees in a sky

Even as she said all this, Elfrida wondered why the hell she was flirting with Boyd, who was, after all, fifteen years younger than she was. For that matter, would Mason even notice?

And if he noticed would he give a damn? And did she give a damn about him giving a damn?

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free of either pollution or city lights, and the scent of damp wood and unknown foliage washed into their nostrils. The driveway, curving blindly through the forest, was as dark as the Tunnel of Love at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. But when Mason took Elfrida’s arm to steady her as she stumbled on the gravel, she shook him off.

“I’m fine,” she announced, standing in a pothole, thumping him on the chest. “I can walk by myself. I’m not one of the mannequins in the store, I’m the Personnel Director! Remember that, mister.”

The driveway poured into a parking lot, acid yellow lights from the Lodge now helping guide Mason and Elfrida across the gravel. To their left, the swimming pool lay still and black as a block of India ink. Elfrida flopped against the wide redwood-dusted hood of a Jaguar, arms akimbo, head back, features illuminated by starlight. Her breasts fell to the sides within her green dress, less perfectly shaped than they once were, but still voluptuous, enticing, potentially delicious. (She was always the prettiest girl at any party, after all.)

“You’re not my father!” she complained to Mason, as she rocked back and forth on the sleek hood.

Turning, she squinted at the trembling black water of the pool. Why weren’t naked bodies splashing through the inky liquid, silhouetted creatures of the night frolicking and flirting? She and Mason had met at a pool, the outdoor city pool where they both swam during their lunch hours. She remembered his heavy shoulders and long legs, his muscled chest and small, endearing belly, his chlorine-weakened Speedo, clinging to him both fore and aft. He was much stronger than she was because he swam every day, while she seldom got to the pool more than three times a week.

When she first saw him naked, she was strangely touched by his buttocks, framed by his big thighs and strong back, but as soft as the skin on a baby.

And when she held his balls in her hand, she was amazed by their tender, cool bulk, and wondered how they could keep their low temperature when the rest of him was so hot. No doubt, she decided, it was a biological trick to preserve the sperm and carry on the species.

Why did we go to that wedding? Pacing her office, Elfrida wrinkled her brow, as if trying to remember something she once knew. Was it to remind themselves of two decades of urgent emotion and well-intentioned plans? To remind themselves that this was the future they’d worked for? Their careers, their family, their home? Did they need to be reminded? For that matter, did any of the junk in that tall hillside house matter to anybody except the two people who’d collected it?

The prospect of Janie and Carl sorting through boxes of letters and sets of dishes, looking with frowns at yellowing files from her office, and considering Mason’s dusty paintings, then deciding what to give to Goodwill, what to sell, what to burn, depressed her. Everything the two of them had created, except their children, was expendable.

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What would Janie and Carl think when they discovered Mason’s old swimsuit, nearly transparent in the seat and loose at the waist? He’d worn it for years, almost every day, until Elfrida finally told him it had become obscene.

“But that’s okay,” she said, “if you want the whole world to know you’re circumcised.”

What about your swimsuit? he’d countered. That supposedly modest one-piece black suit became like a second skin when wet, revealing her large nipples under its shiny clinging fabric and caressing her buttocks like a glossy tongue.

Elfrida had tried to throw away those two old swimsuits, but he’d rescued them. Not these, he’d protested. These are our history. In their tired, unslick fabric lingers the beginning of our love.

Now, in her office, Elfrida thought: Soon, Carl and Janie will be in college, out on their own. She loved her kids, but knew they’d earned their freedom.

For that matter, she never intended to stay at Wiegand’s for the rest of her life. She didn’t intend to do any one thing for the rest of her life. The thought startled her, but she realized it was true.

She peered through the Venetian blinds at the street seven stories below: pedestrians moving like mechanical dolls among green and white buses and yellow cabs. How easy to unfasten the latch, slide up the window. In new buildings, windows didn’t open, but Wiegand’s dated to the thirties, an Art Deco fantasy with scrolls and geometric patterns that couldn’t decide if they were Egyptian or Aztec. It’d be no trouble to balance on this slanting granite sill and slip over, as if into the silent, mirrored depths of a pool.

Where, she wondered, was Snookums, the handicapped Corgi? Did she sleep with Boyd, the pair of them naked in bed together, the beauty and the bitch?

That afternoon, driving among careless office workers sprinting to bus stops and BART entrances, Elfrida nearly ran down a white-haired graysuited man who suddenly appeared specter-like in front of her, a half-unfolded newspaper under his arm. Dropping the paper, he raised a fist and swore, then fell over onto the street.

Passersby rushed to him as Elfrida pulled to the curb. Her car hadn’t touched him, but apparently he’d had a heart attack. Paramedics and police arrived, questions were asked, answers were offered, and the man was removed. Elfrida didn’t even get a traffic ticket, but she was forty-five minutes late getting home, carrying the unpleasant stench of unearned guilt.

Quentin and Lolly now were bound together by love and law. Mason pondered this. He stood at the window in his attic studio, looking over the cascading peaked rooftops of this corner of San Francisco, and considered the human condition. Shadows from drifting clouds crawled over the steep shingled slopes angled in front of him.

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He felt sorry for Quentin and Lolly, facing the inevitable shrinkage of their hopes and dreams as they discovered they didn’t really know either themselves or each other. He feared for their future, just as he feared for Janie’s and Carl’s futures, just as he once feared (or maybe still did) for his and Elfrida’s. Caring opens you to risks.

He looked down at the street. It wasn’t like Elfrida to be so late. And he began imagining the disasters that could’ve happened. He could see through his worries to the absurdity, but then countered his half-hearted effort to be reasonable by acknowledging that any of those calamities could in fact happen.

Fear has no more to do with logic than love does.

Below, cars ploughed up and down the hill, but none that he recognized.

In the far distance, he could see the dark silhouettes of trees marching across the crest of one of the city’s hillside parks, reminding him of the wedding in the redwoods, of ancient and primitive rites and even more ancient passions and hopes.

Elfrida parked on the sloping pavement in front of her house and sat in the car. She could see herself clinging to the safety bar of a roller coaster, being tossed over lung-crushing crests only to be lifted again to stomach-churning peaks. She felt nauseous, dizzy, from the convoluted, speeding trajectory of her existence. Who could save her? Mason?

A police car cruised past, two stolid young cops—one WASP, one Latino—eyeing her before they continued along the block. What could they think of a lone woman sitting in a new Lexus in this neighborhood, this time of evening? That she was waiting for her husband and kids to come out of one of the houses? That she was planning to rob one of these over-priced merchandise-filled homes? Or that she was an expensive whore waiting for a client to appear out of one of those enameled doors? They parked two houses away, watching her.

She pulled her coat around her breasts, blocking from her thoughts the past two decades, marriage, parenthood...everything but a hunger to be young with life waiting to be discovered. She didn’t feel middle-aged, didn’t consider herself halfway through life. She was still embarking on existence, still rich with potential.

Eyes closed, Elfrida rocked gently within the shell of her foreign car, pressing her fingers through her coat’s soft leather sleeves into the flesh of her arms.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

She looked up and saw, through the Lexus’ dusty side window, Mason’s lumpy yet appealing features looking at her with that concerned expression she’d seen so many times. She knew every bump and crater of that face.

Elfrida nodded and opened the car door. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m coming in.”

But, instead of following Mason, she began walking down the hill, 16 | CCLaP Weekender

passing the two-toned police car.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” called the youngest cop. The good-looking Latino one. His features were strong, dark, the face of a male who knew who he was and why.

“Sure, I’m fine,” she replied, as she stepped off the curb.

What was this marriage business, anyway? They were just animals made for procreation so the species, unworthy and nasty though it was much of the time, would continue. Male. Female. Sperm and egg. Genes and DNA. Mix and match. Make something new, maybe better, maybe not—different enough, but similar. Where did weddings come into this? Pomp and bridal registries? Let the species take care of itself.

Before she reached the other side of the street, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She knew without looking that it was Mason and they continued walking down the hill together.

“I’ll try to stop worrying,” he said.

Elfrida looked at him.

“Fat chance,” she said. C

Reeves’ novella, DELPHINE, published in 2012 by Texas Review Press, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Competition. He also has published three novels (THE NIGHT ACTION, New American Library and Signet Books (paper); MAN ON FIRE, Pyramid Books; and STREET SMARTS, Beaufort Books and Ace Books (paper).) THE NIGHT ACTION also was published in Great Britain and Germany and bought by Warner Brothers. Recently, he has completed a new novel.

Find him on Twitter at @bugfat_bruce.

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Featuring

Amber Hargroder plus six open-mic features

The CCLaP Showcase A new reading series and open mic

Tuesday, August 26th, 6:30 pm City Lit Books | 2523 N. Kedzie cclapcenter.com/events

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To sign up in advance for an open mic slot, write cclapcenter@gmail.com

Todd Schlemmer

PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE August 8, 2014 | 19

Location: Ballard.Seattle.WA.USA I make things. To that end, I cherish tools that allow me to make things. Naturally, that includes my cameras, but I have a shop full of clever devices with which I have built boats, and fixed machines, and made art, including photographs. My shop also necessarily includes computers and software, my smartphone, scanners, and now 3D printers, and soon a CNC mill.

I am always working on multiple projects, but I make photographs every day. Now, with computer-aided-design and the 3D printers, I can also say that I make cameras every day. I built my first pinhole camera six years ago—a precious three-pound wood and brass artifact—and when I built my first 3D printer, a pinhole camera seemed like a worthy design challenge. I shoot a lot of pinhole now, mostly with 3D printed pinhole cameras, and the habitual deliberation of making an analog exposure on film influences every other photograph I make.

In the real world, I work as a Firefighter/Paramedic in the Seattle area. I studied paleontology, computer science, broadcasting, and attended the University of Washington School of Medicine Paramedic Training. I have also worked as a chef, a Birkenstock store manager, and a Developer Support Engineer at Microsoft.

Worst. Job. Ever: Making artificial crab.

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flickr.com/theschlem @theschlem 3D printed pinhole camera plans: thingiverse.com/schlem/designs

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CCLaP Publishing

An official painter for the Lithuanian Communist Party, Martynas Kudirka enjoys a pleasant, unremarkable life with a beautiful wife and all the privileges that come with being a party member. Yet in the summer of 1989, his ordinary world suddenly turns upside down. Political revolt is breaking out across Eastern Europe, and Martynas comes home to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor with a knife in her back. Realizing the police will not investigate, he sets out to find his wife’s killer. Instead, he stumbles upon her secret life. Martynas finds himself drawn into the middle of an independence movement, on a quest to find confidential documents that could free a nation. Cold War betrayals echo down through the years as author Bronwyn Mauldin takes the reader along a modern-day path of discovery to find out Martynas’ true identity. Fans of historical fiction will travel back in time to 1989, the Baltic Way protest and Lithuania’s “singing revolution,” experiencing a nation’s determination for freedom and how far they would fight to regain it.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/lovesongs

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The CCLaP Weekender is published in electronic form only, every Friday for free download at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com]. Copyright 2014, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Allegra Pusateri. Layout Editor: Wyatt Roediger-Robinette. Calendar Editors: Anna Thiakos and Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

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