CCLaP Weekender: November 7, 2014

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

November 7, 2014

New fiction by Bruce Douglas Reeves Photography by Riccardo Bandiera Chicago literary events calendar November 7, 2014 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 7pm Renee Rosen

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com The Book Cellar is pleased to present Renee Rosen and her new novel, What the Lady Wants: A Novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age. 7:30pm Jac Jemc and Anne Valente

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com Jac Jemc and Anne Valente read from their collections, In A Different Bed Every Time and By Light We Knew Our Names.

Refreshments will be served.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8 7pm Lindsay Currie and Trisha Leaver

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com Local Chicago author Lindsay Currie, along with her co-author Trisha Leaver, debut their Young Adult novel Creed at The Book Cellar.

10pm Delphic Arts Center

Delphic Arts Center / 5340 W. Lawrence / $10 facebook.com/delphicarts Music, poetry, comedy, monologues, and more are welcome.

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

enter.com/chicagocalendar]

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9 4:30pm Anna Quindlen

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com The author discusses her work.

7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $6, 21+ slampapi.com Featuring open mike, special guests, and end-of-the-night competition.

7pm 2nd Story

Greenline Coffee / 501 E 61st / $20 or $1-$1,000 2ndstory.com From a college student’s first brush with crime to a teenage girl coming into her own identity, hear four stories of breaking free.

Curated by Jessica Young. Directed by Jess Kadish. Sound Design

by Harold Washington Trio.

7pm Asylum

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

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

November 7, 2014 | 3

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10 7pm 2nd Story

Greenline Coffee / 501 E 61st / $20 or $1-$1,000 2ndstory.com From a college student’s first brush with crime to a teenage girl coming into her own identity, hear four stories of breaking free.

Curated by Jessica Young. Directed by Jess Kadish. Sound Design

by Harold Washington Trio.

8pm Ruffled Feathers

RENO / 2607 N. Milwaukee https://www.facebook.com/events/1491907454407091/ The sleeper shall awaken. Monday November 10th Ruffled Feathers wakes up. Please, come and share your poem, song, story, dance, joke, babble, or whatever. Out new host RENO!!! has a full bar, wonderful kitchen, and the show can accommodate people of all ages, as long as their bed time is after 8pm.

8:30pm Open Mic

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

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 7pm

Indiegogo Perk Party Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Donations womenandchildrenfirst.com Join us as we rally support during the final week of our Indiegogo campaign, "Women & Children & YOU First: $35K in 30 Days"! Enjoy light refreshments, music by DJ Spinikki, readings, and a silent auction. Please check out our campaign story, watch our pitch video, and make a donation today: http://igg.me/at/ womenandchildrenfirst/.

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 7pm Brock Clarke & Miriam Toews

The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free bookcellarinc.com Scott Onak hosts authors Brock Clarke and Miriam Toews in literary conversation as they discuss their newest books, The Happiest People in The World and All My Puny Sorrows.

7pm

Dannielle Owens-Reid, Kristin Russo, and Vivek Shraya Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free womenandchildrenfirst.com For this event, Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo will share inspiring stories from their new question-and-answer book This is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids, which fosters conversation about LGBTQ youth issues, parenting, and diverse representations of family. Canadian author Vivek Shraya will join Dannielle and Kristin and read from his book, God Loves Hair.

7:30pm Lan Cao

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com The author reads from her new book, The Lotus and the Storm.

9pm In One Ear

Heartland Cafe / 7000 N. Glenwood / $3, 18+ facebook.com/pagesIn-One-Ear/210844945622380 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 https://www.facebook.com/events/708573082554565 An open mike for poetry, music, comedy, performance, and whatever else.

November 7, 2014 | 5

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13 7pm Harriet Reading Series: Garrett Caples

Poetry Foundation / 61 West Superior St / Free Poetryfoundation.org An evening of performance featuring readings by poets Robyn Schiff and Philip Jenks, a collaboration between Toronto-based poet Damian Rogers and Chicago-based Drag City artist Azita Youssefi, and interstitial entertainment by Sally Timms of the long-standing punk band the Mekons.

7:30pm Dylan Landis

Women & Children First / 5233 N. Clark / Free

womenandchildrenfirst.com The author reads from her new book, Rainey Royal.

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.

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Featuring

Patricia Ann McNair plus six open-mic features

The CCLaP Showcase A new reading series and open mic

Tuesday, November 25th 6:30 pm City Lit Books | 2523 N. Kedzie cclapcenter.com/events

To sign up in advance for an open mic slot, write cclapcenter@gmail.com November 7, 2014 | 7

ORIGINAL FICTION

Photo: “Janet Leigh, Psycho,” by St Stev [flickr.com/st-stev]. Used under the terms of his Creative Commons license.

MAMA SUPE

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I was hatched in Honolulu the day FDR rode his wheelchair into the great beyond. That was some kind of sign to Mom. She loved him for getting us through the Depression and Winning the War. Pop worked on the assembly line—where he’d been since ‘42, when it was patriotic to put in the eight-to-five plus overtime, even graveyard shift. He was too old to be in the service, otherwise I might never’ve existed.

Later, he wasn’t putting together big guns or whatever he was doin’ back then—just canning pineapple. He’s dead now, like FDR. He looked like that idiot detective Milton Arbogast in Psycho—the sap who ran into Ma Bates on the staircase.

ERMARKET

BY BRUCE DOUGLAS REEVES November 7, 2014 | 9

I’m Franklin Delano Jara. Folks call me Frank.

Look, I never liked school, starting when Mom abandoned me in that half-day kindergarten—but I hated high school. The building was as ugly as Pop’s cannery—and the bastards tried to turn me into a slave just like Pop. I got this theory: the world’s run by The Others, jokers who try to turn everybody else into slaves. People let ‘em do it. That’s what pisses me off.

Especially in high school. The teachers were slaves too, and scared of fighting back.

One guy, Fernando Villanueva, and me weren’t buddies exactly, but we got along okay—which was more’n either of us did with anybody else. His chest, back, arms, and legs—even his ass—were covered with black hair. The women teachers hated Fernando ‘cause he always needed a shave. One day, in the shower after P.E., these other kids wouldn’t stop making jokes about all that hair. Fernando went berserk and bashed heads against the tile until Mr. Osgood and Mr. Tominaga held him down. Next I heard, they put him in a nut house.

I was up to here with school, but when I wanted to drop out, Pop got after me to finish, even talked about me goin’ to junior college—which showed he didn’t know a damn thing about his only son—but I talked Mom into letting me join the navy. Escape Hawai’i, school, and my old man. The old bastard hit Mom when she told him she signed the papers for me, but he didn’t dare hit me. Said he didn’t wanna set eyes on me again. That was okay by me. Mom was cryin’ when I picked up my suitcase and headed out to let the world see me.

In spite of the assholes in the navy—and there were plenty of ‘em—I didn’t mind it. Sure, the navy was run one hundred percent by The Others, but I was treated like a man. And I finished my education in the navy. Why not? It was free. And I saw Tokyo and Hong Kong and Manila and San Diego.

You know what they were? Traps for suckers. Not me though.

Then The Others got me put on this submarine. It turned me nuts. So they did all these tests and decided I wasn’t any good in the navy. I had this sickness the doc called claustrophobia, which meant closed-in places got to me. So I snagged a medical discharge.

I wired Mom from the mainland: “FREE AND HOMEWARD BOUND.” My old man telegraphed back: “NOT THIS HOME.” When I got off the bus and walked up to our house, Mom met me in the middle of the sidewalk, crying. Pop stood in the doorway, arms folded across his aloha shirt. He’d worked at the cannery so long, he’d started looking like a pineapple.

“That boy o’ yours comes in this house,” he growled, “I move out.”

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I moved in, he moved out. Pop was over with The Others—where he’d really been all along. You can’t be sure about other people, except that most of the time they disappoint you.

Mom cried more now, but we made popcorn and watched the blackand-white TV. I think the biggest day of her life was when Pop brought it home from the Ala Moana Shopping Center. She loved that TV. Personally, I thought it was a lot of shit—except sometimes the movies. My favorite was Psycho. Whenever it was on, I sat there with a bowl of popcorn and watched the whole picture, even though I knew it by heart. I could tell you most of the words and all about Marion Crane’s shower. I loved it when Martin Balsam was surprised at the top of the stairs. I still play that scene over and over in my head.

After I was home about a month, Mom started worrying about money.

Said I ought to get a job. I knew one thing—no damn pineapple cannery for me.

I got up when the alarm screeched, opened the window and leaned out, watching the losers on their way to work. Two women in short skirts and high heels and a skinny guy with a briefcase ran to catch a bus. I rooted for the bus, but they jumped on before it escaped.

Three times, Mom called, “Get up!” Three times, I shouted back, “I am up!”

I pulled on my shorts, went down to breakfast. Dry cornflakes waited on the table with a spoon on a folded, pink paper napkin. Mom stood by the Frigidaire, carton of skim milk in her hand. I sat at the table and dumped sugar on the cornflakes. Running her fingers through my hair, she poured the skim milk into the bowl.

I didn’t have a car, so I had to push onto a slave-crowded bus, scared I’d turn into a ghost like my old man. The receptionist at the employment office was wearing one of those muumuu things that was supposed to hide that she was pregnant, but she still looked like she swallowed the world’s biggest bowling ball. I told her I had to get a job. She showed her crooked teeth in a fake smile and ordered me to take a number. I would’ve done her a favor if I’d knocked those teeth down her throat, but I just explained I needed that job now.

“These people are ahead of you.” She pointed to four rows of metal chairs—all full of ghost people. I snatched number forty-three and sat in the last row on the end, so I wouldn’t be contaminated.

When it was my turn, it wasn’t the pregnant grump who called my number but an old Samoan big enough to pick me up under her arm. We passed a lot of steel desks ‘til we came to hers. Rolls of fat jiggled and slid under her clothes. I wondered if she could just slice it off and throw it away, November 7, 2014 | 11

then sew up the skin. She told me to sit, then tossed a smile at me. Her teeth had to be false. Too perfect for such an old gal.

“What kind of job do you want?”

“Who said I want one? But I gotta work, so here I am. A victim, like everybody else.”

“That’s not the right attitude, young man.”

“Hey, give me time.”

“What can you do?” She was less friendly now.

“I finished high school in the navy, but they give me this medical discharge.”

“I see.”

She asked a lot of personal questions so I had to give her the old runaround. I told her how my old man hated me and made me drop out of school and join the navy, about how I worked hard and got a diploma anyway—and how he moved out when I come home.

“He’s not natural,” she said.

“You’re telling me.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

She rubbed her blob of a nose and tried to figure what cubby-hole to stick my ass in.

“What about construction work?

You like doing things with your hands? Carpentry? Painting?”

“Mom wouldn’t let me. I got delicate health.”

“Oh. The medical discharge.”

She wrinkled her forehead to show she was thinking. Finally, she decided to give me tests to find out my aptitudes and interests.

“I took tests in the navy.”

“They were different tests. Come back at this time and go to that room over there.”

She gave me a piece of paper with the testing appointment written on it.

When I came back, the tests were given by the ugliest female I’d ever seen. She was all stooped over, head pushed forward on a scrawny neck. The questions were stupid. You know the

The questions were stupid. You know the kind: would you rather (a) climb a mountain, (b) visit a library, (c) attend an auction, (d) none of ‘em. I picked (d) most of the time.

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kind: would you rather (a) climb a mountain, (b) visit a library, (c) attend an auction, (d) none of ‘em. I picked (d) most of the time. Then I had to plough through arithmetic problems and grammar questions and puzzles about machinery and factory parts or some damn thing. When I finished all the sections, the ugly old gal told me to come back in a week.

“At that time,” she says, “they’ll try to place you.”

There I was being ordered around again. You can’t beat the damn machine.

I went home and told Mom what was happening.

“See?” she said. “Everything’s gonna work out real good.”

My old man came over later, trying to set Mom against me. I didn’t even know he was there, except I heard her screaming. I ran out of my room and caught him sayin’ I ain’t any son o’ his. I stared him right in the eyeball and said, “I hope you’re right, old man.”

He looked at me with his squinty eyes and walked out. Did his dirty work and left Mom cryin’. She said she cried ‘cause she loved me, but why should love make her cry?

All week, I felt like I was waiting for my execution.

One night, when I was hanging out over by Chinatown, this tourist came onto me—said he was lonesome. Asked if I’d like a drink in his room. I was broke and bored so I went along. It was a pretty swank hotel, by Waikiki.

Upstairs, he threw his ugly, plaid jacket on the bed and got me a beer from the minibar. Then he went into the bathroom. I took the cash out of the sap’s wallet and beat it before he came out of the john.

Finally, I went back to the employment office and asked for Miss Ma’afala—the big Samoan with the false teeth. She was talkin’ on the phone, but looked up and smiled. Her dentures winked at me.

“Good to see you,” she lied, when she hung up the phone. “I have the results of your tests.” She picked up a folder. “You’re very intelligent.” Here we go, I figured. “You ought to go to college now that you’ve got your navy high school diploma.”

“I hate school.”

“It’s a shame to waste that ability. You should do something with your life.”

“If I gotta work, okay, but nobody can make me like it.” I grinned real mean. “So what does your list say? Don’t say gold miner, ‘cause I hate being closed in. Ha ha.”

“It seems,” she said, fluttering through papers and charts, “you’re best qualified for clerical work. Or sales. How’d you like to be a supermarket checker?”

I shrugged my shoulders. She put her hands flat on the desk between us and gave me the low down about the world of supermarketing. Next morning November 7, 2014 | 13

at nine, I reported to the Ventura Market Training Institute.

A pimply boy about my age in the lousiest aloha shirt I ever set eyes on, all covered with pineapples, was sitting at a desk when I walked in. He looked like Lee Harvey Oswald, with that nervous, guilty expression. Probably playing with himself under that desk. I told the retard my name. After squinting at me, he said the counselor was busy. I sat on a chair and read in Reader’s Digest about the diseases that’re going to wipe out the human race. I could hardly wait. Fifteen minutes later, the asshole stopped scratching his face long enough to tell me to go in.

First thing I saw in the so-called counselor’s office was his green suit.

Then his big hand stretched out.

“Hi!” he bellowed. “Ray Bagdickian. Come in. Let’s talk things over.”

He flopped his beefy arm around my shoulder and pushed me down in this phony-leather armchair, then sat on the edge of his desk, slacks tight over his fat thighs, and grinned at me. Definitely one of Them.

“How much does it cost?” I asked.

“Our graduates are guaranteed jobs.” He smiled.

“Yeah. How much?”

“I looked over your test results. Very impressive.”

“How much do I pay you to teach me to pack groceries?”

“Two hundred dollars for the entire four-week course. That includes our special graduate placement service. When you leave the Ventura Market Training Institute, diploma in hand, your future is guaranteed.”

“That’s what I’m scared of.”

“Let me show you our school.” Bagdickian flung his arm around my shoulder again.

I slipped out of his grasp. “Okay, but hurry, huh? I got a date.”

I didn’t, but I was learnin’ how the game was played.

He took me back to the classrooms, chatting away like a cut-rate announcer on a local TV station. The first torture cells we glanced in on were like regular classrooms—smaller, but crowded with desks and a pink chalk board at one end. Pink!

“Many of our pupils benefit from work with arithmetic before we teach them the science of making change. We have specialists in the field to help our pupils through these common difficulties.” He led me down a plywood cattle chute between classes. “We try to install professional pride in our pupils.

Market checking is a noble branch of the sales profession.”

I never heard such hoo-ha in my life.

He steered me into this room that looked like the front of a supermarket— 14 | CCLaP Weekender

two rows of three checkout stands, each with counter, cash register, paper sacks, and carts of groceries. The groceries were empty boxes and cans and bottles and hunks of wood shaped like fruits and vegetables and slabs of meat.

A lot of ‘em had been dinged, chipping off paint.

“Our pupils are proficient at each of the types of cash registers used in supermarkets today. That’s why they’re in demand.” Half-a-dozen assholes and a couple of chicks were screwing around on the machines. They stared at me like I had two heads, but they were the freaks. “The principle is the same as with a typewriter—you never look at the keys.”

“Sure,” I said, admiring the tits on a gal with a sun-streaked ponytail.

An empty soap flake box shot out of her hand and bounced off my chest.

Bagdickian picked it up.

“Some of our pupils progress faster than others.”

As usual, Mom was in front of the TV when I came in. She was watching Girl Talk and wouldn’t let me tell her about the institute ‘til the program was over.

“Gonna cost you two hundred smackers,” I said. “To make a grocery clerk out of me.”

Right away, she started cryin’. I didn’t know whether it was me or the money or some other damn thing. I cut out and drifted from one beer joint to another ‘til they locked up.

“At least, you’ll meet people,” Mom said, next morning, dumping cereal in my bowl.

“Yeah. It’ll be great.”

When the new classes at the Ventura Market Training Institute began, I was there—wearing this blue snap-on bow tie Mom gave me. Mr. Agbayani Ventura, himself, was the teacher. A shrimpy, bald Filipino, he spoke with a lisping voice that made the females giggle. A disgusting example of The Others.

Ventura began with a lot of poop about what he called the “theory of marketing.” Then came bonehead arithmetic. We wound up in the big room, where we were introduced to different models of cash registers. When we staggered out later, one of the girls moaned, “This is gonna be so hard. I hope I can do it. I want to so much, but I’m scared it’s too hard for me.”

My only thought was: four damn weeks of this! Holy shit!

I was tempted to head downtown and get drunk—but I had to face Mom sooner or later. She hardly waited for me to settle my ass at the table. Did I realize how hard two hundred bucks was to come by? When would I be finished and get a job? How much would I make to start with? I answered her with grunts and shoveled dry meatloaf into my face.

Life faded into a nightmare of cornflakes, arithmetic, and NCR Electronic November 7, 2014 | 15

Cash Registers. During morning and afternoon breaks, the girls trooped out together to the Donut King next door. (No wonder they looked like a herd of hippos.) Fifteen minutes later, still giggling and gossiping, they marched back—dripping crumbs and sugar over the cash registers. Sometimes, the guys went to the Donut King but, more often, they stood around smoking and talking about the girls. I didn’t have a thing to do with any of ‘em.

Laszlo Smith, a big greasy-haired Italian or Greek or something, in spite of his name (the kind of guy you could still see the tooth marks from his comb in his Brylcreemed hair), tried to make up to me—but I wasn’t interested in being friends. If I believed him, which I didn’t, he’d already laid every female in the school, including the pig-faced housewife. He was always after me to make out with the gals too. Like I didn’t have better things to do.

This chick named Miriam spent half her time winking over her NCR at me, standing first on one foot, then on the other, shifting her weight from one skirt-busting thigh to the other, while she rang up pretend prices for wood veggies.

An asshole with a short, curly, black beard was at the cash register next to mine. George P. Francis. Mr. Ventura said he’d never get a supermarket job unless he shaved it off. On the fourth day of classes, George appeared, grinning like a fool, with a lumpy naked chin. He hung around me on coffee breaks, offering me cigarettes. I told him I didn’t smoke, but he didn’t get the hint. Then he suggested we go to a café down the street for lunch.

“Don’t eat lunch,” I told him.

His big brown eyes bulged, then he laughed—like I made a joke. The Others had trained him good.

Cliff Isonaga and Laszlo Smith kept after me ‘til I gave in and went bowling with ‘em. After supper one night, I told Mom I was goin’ out. She stood by the table with a bowl of leftover spaghetti in her hands.

“Watch out,” I told her.

“Damn spaghetti’s gonna slide on the floor.” And I walked out.

Cliff’s shiny low-riding Chevy pulled up. I got in the back and he dug out. Some assholes always gotta show off. He must’ve thought it was some fancy road hog just ‘cause he stitched it together like Frankenstein’s monster with globs of chrome.

I only bowled a couple times in my life. I never liked games. You win? So what? How was I to know these guys took bowling serious?

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“One more stop,” he announced.

He braked at a suspiciously neat little house and honked the horn. George Francis sauntered out like a big shot and climbed in beside me. I should’ve known. All these dorky dicks stick together. I rolled down the window to let in fresh air.

I only bowled a couple times in my life. I never liked games. You win?

So what? How was I to know these guys took bowling serious? Of course, George had to show off ‘til half the people at the Pacific Bowl were watching him. Hell, a monkey could be the greatest bowler in history if he was taught how. After a couple of games, I called it quits and sat on the side, drinking Oly and watching the others. When he was sweating and stinking good, George plopped down beside me, rubbing at his forehead with a plaid handkerchief.

“I’ll have one of those,” he told the waitress.

When she brought the Oly, she congratulated him on his bowling. “You could be a champ.”

“Shit!” I said. And left him sitting there.

I had to show ‘em I still was independent—no matter what tricks they pulled. I ran out, almost bumping into two teenage sluts in stretch pants— the kind that have straps tight under the arch—and clinging sweaters. Then, on the far side of the street surrounded by laughing kids, I saw my old man squatting, arms spread like wings, mouth open like a barn door, singing some obscene song.

There’s no fighting Them.

I ran down the block and jumped on a bus, just when it pulled away.

When I got home, I didn’t tell Mom I saw the old fart. She was already whimpering.

The four weeks of fun finally ended and Miss Gam, the other teacher, and Shrimpy Ventura bored us with dumb speeches and handed out certificates.

The next day, Bagdickian and me discussed the employment situation. The prospects weren’t bad. Supermarkets were taking over the solar system.

After breakfast on Monday, I left home to start work at the Island Queen Food Fair on Kapahulu Avenue, just past the canal. Mom wanted me to get a job, right? But now that I had one, she was scared she was losing control of me. Her spluttering followed me down the street.

The air conditioning at the Island Queen Food Fair slapped me in the face like a SnoCone. I never spent much time in markets. Mom did the shopping.

Tin foil streamers waved hello and goodbye from the ceiling. Balloons bobbed like Jayne Mansfield’s boobies atop display cases. Mushy music oozed out of hidden speakers. A woman in a muumuu as big as a circus tent wheeled November 7, 2014 | 17

toward me with a loaded cart and a vicious expression. Stepping backwards, I crunched the ankle of a young chick in shorts. She swore and the woman with the cart slammed into someone else. Two points for me.

The manager, a greasy Italian type, smiled (everybody always smiled, but I never fell for it) and shook my hand, introducing himself as Art Wolfit. I figured his real name was Arturo Wolfito. I pumped his hand, pretending I’d be overjoyed to bust my ass for him.

He told me where the schedules were posted and showed me where to punch in and out. Then he led me through the store to the stock room. The first week, I’d unpack cans and restock shelves, maybe even take inventory with one of the other checkers. A job filled with endless opportunity.

Second day, I was unpacking a carton of canned apricots when Wolfito led another guy into the stock room. Arturo introduced him as a new checker and left him to help unpack cans. This was the cleverest blow of all: George “P. for Prick” Francis. He pretended he was surprised as hell to meet me in the Food Fair stock room, but I wasn’t fooled for a second. I had to shake his hand but, after that, I made sure I didn’t touch him or anything he touched.

The next week, I moved up to the cash register half-time. Twenty hours a week, I wrestled with cardboard cartons and tin cans and plastic bottles.

Twenty hours a week, I battled groceries, wire carts, paper sacks, trading stamps, money, and one asshole shopper after another. After an hour at the register, I knew that the H Bomb was too good for most people.

The spies and stoolies were lying low, but eyeballs were everywhere.

George Francis was at the register in front of me. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder and flashed his dumb grin. Each time he did it, I wanted to kiss those white teeth with a bucket of poi. I watched him ‘til I could predict what he’d do before he did it. I’d be ready.

Just when I was set in a routine—gettin’ up early, shoveling down cereal and skim milk, surviving each day at the Food Fair—Arturo changed my schedule. Evenings and nights. Now I had to spend the morning dodging Mom’s evil eye. I worked from two ‘til eleven, with an hour for dinner. George P. Francis was moved to evening shift at the same time. Pretty damn obvious, but then I realized they knew I was onto ‘em. They were pulling this stunt to clue me in that they knew I knew.

On weekends, some of the younger guys got together with their chicks and had this sort of party at a different house or apartment each week. They kept asking if I wanted to come along. Finally, I figured I might as well get it over with.

Tenari Galeai, a pudgy Samoan checker who’d been working at the Food Fair about six months longer’n me, gave me the address, told me to bring my girl. I didn’t bother to say I didn’t have a girl. He hinted I could contribute a 18 | CCLaP Weekender

bottle or two. I figured why the hell should I spend my dough so they could have enough of a blast to swallow their slavery the rest of the week?

At first, I thought I had the wrong address, the dump was so dark—then I noticed the door open a crack and music oozing out. I pushed it open and peered into the gloom—three or four couples dancing, a few others sitting around the room necking, smoking, drinking. One guy was asleep or passed out on the floor. Eyes lurked in corners, voices whispered over my shoulder.

A girl appeared out of the darkness, tossed a tail of light-colored hair over her shoulder, took my hand. Without a word, we started dancing.

I ain’t much of a dancer, but I figured it didn’t matter. Later, I saw Tenari leaning against the wall. Even from across the room, I could tell he was jeering at me. I’m sure the girl was snickering too. Everybody in the room was laughing. The blonde kept on dancing when I left her, like she never needed me to begin with.

“Where’s your chick?” Tenari asked.

“Didn’t bring one.”

“Hell, don’t matter. Plenty of loose stuff here. Or will be. Bring any booze?” I shook my head. “That’s more serious.” He shrugged. “We can pick up some later. A dry gig is nowhere. Hey, there’s Mary Lou. Go over, tighten up on her.”

I’d been invited so they could laugh at me. Who wanted their booze and chicks? I saw ‘em around me, moving in the shadows, slivers of light from the Venetian blinds on their ugly, smirking faces. The second I saw George Francis’s white teeth gleaming in the dark I knew the party was a frame up.

“Hey, man,” he said, holding out his mitt and smiling. Like he knew what I was gonna say, even what I was thinking.

“Too crowded,” I blurted.

Their laughter drilling into my ears, I escaped.

I decided to buy a used car. Maybe it’d help me escape the eyeballs and snoops. I went out when I could, hunting for the right one. Mom thought I ought to spend the time I wasn’t working watching the idiot box with her, munching snacks made out of breakfast cereal and melted marshmallows, but I walked between big shiny hulks squatting like dinosaur carcasses, talkin’ to slimy salesmen hot to sell me anything that moved. Eventually, I found a ‘55 Chevy like Cliff Isonaga’s, only not a low-rider dripping chrome. I signed for three payments over three months and drove it away.

I don’t mind the Food Fair so much now—not that I was giving in to Them. Didn’t even mind the customers—most of ‘em. What I liked best was handling all those bananas and oranges, guavas and papayas. Still hated the November 7, 2014 | 19

pineapples, though. The bright colors, the streamers and balloons, the posters advertising Vande Kamp cookies and cakes—all that made me feel good. It wasn’t so bad standing at my NCR register, responsible for my cash drawer, with my rag for wiping up the counter. The spies were still there, but kept their distance. Everything I needed was there, from toothbrushes to clothes.

Maybe, I thought, I could be happy if I could just stay at the Food Fair, sleep on a cot in the back room, and give up battling The Others. 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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originally published May 2014

PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE

Riccardo Bandiera

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Location: Italy I’m a freelance/artist photographer and I live in a small town on the sea. I like to succeed in capturing the beauty in a girl, the light of a place, still better if it’s abandoned, the small things that surround us...I do it with the Canon 5D or in analogical, with various fixed optical cameras.

It’s difficult for me say precisely what pushes me to photograph, it is something that I have inside, the desire to surprise me and to create, to stop an idea, a feeling, with an image.

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riccardobandiera.com flickr.com/thewhitestdogalive codeine.bigcartel.com

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CCLaP Publishing

Jamie has lost his brother Matt to the war in Afghanistan. What he finds harder to deal with is that he soon starts to lose a sense of Matt. Hurt and confused, Jamie decides he must travel to the place where Matt was killed--he must go to Kabul. There he finds a surreal landscape of mercenaries and soldiers, violent teenage terrorists, diaspora-trained lawyers in a land currently without law, and where he strikes up a friendship with a beautiful, headstrong local woman. As Jamie’s life descends into a series of unwelcome encounters, and Afghanistan descends further into chaos, things reach a climactic head for the British bluecollar slacker antihero, and it soon becomes clear that his rash trip to a land he doesn’t understand may end up holding deadly consequences. A major new literary achievement, and one of the most metaphorically astute looks yet at the Millennial “War on Terror,” The Wounding Time is a darkly poetic contemporary masterpiece, and marks the brilliant literary debut of London author Hussein Osman.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/thewoundingtime

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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: Behn Riahi. 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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