Now That I’m Ready To Tell You Everything A Novella
GK Wuori
On a beautiful spring morning, Serena Callaway wanted nothing more than a quiet, meditative walk along the streets of her small town. Then she found a toe, a woman’s big toe, recently pedicured, lying in the street, and began to realize that normal, along with quiet and certainly meditative, just might not be where things were headed that day. Now That I’m Ready To Tell You Everything is a quirky romp through a single morning, as a group of quite ordinary people try desperately to turn average moments into nutty adventures.
Chapters Sleepy Serena And An Awful Discovery Serena Naked With Tips I Want To Be Your Dirty Pictures The Let Lady’s Boy Is Paris Burning? Is Osiris In Trouble? Serena Pops Binky Out Like A Hot Dog From A Bun An Ordinary Placement Of Serena’s Butt Good Mothers Often Have Good Sons About the Author
1 Sleepy Serena and an Awful Discovery Serena didn’t know what to make of the toe she found lying in the street in front of the Able-Bodied Bookstore. While the bookstore, an “adult” one of the genre, often attracted a kinky clientele, Serena felt sure that most of them both entered and left the store with all their toes intact. Serena did think at first that the toe — the big toe from a right foot featuring a tastefully manicured toenail painted in a muted coral — might have come from the store. She and her best friend, Mariel, shopped in that unusual establishment on occasion, buying playthings to loosen up husbands tightened by hard times, by layoffs, downsizings (Serena often forgot which term applied to a particular fiscal moment), the usual economic indignities, but she couldn’t remember having seen any play toes, which conceivably might have some purpose, even for her, since her husband, M. Callaway, now and then liked to play with her feet, especially if he was drunk. He didn’t drink, or drink too much, very often, but he had been doing that lately following his latest middle-management debacle. Serena’s feet, of course, were real, so she felt stuck for a moment on the idea of fake feet or fake toes, even fake breasts or the undulant softness of a fake armpit (scent-free). They had big dolls in there, too, that looked like, well, big dolls. But she knew the technology expanded every day, so it wasn’t hard to think that someday a lonely man or woman would be able to buy a doll so real you’d never know it wasn’t a person, at least not until you talked to it and found its replies a good bit dirtier than the average woman you took out for burgers and Saturday night church. Serena’s husband sometimes told her she didn’t seem all that real as they made love, but it was only when she was really, really tired and got I love you mixed up with What do you want to have for supper? When he did that, when he asked her if she was dead or unconscious or lost in thinking how much she’d made in tips that day, he was never insulting about it. Serena understood. She knew M. Callaway simply needed to convince himself he wasn’t alone in the world. As she looked closer at the toe in question, however, lying neatly centered on the white parking stripe, something she’d seen once on the Internet came to mind; namely, a hand being cut from the arm of a thief in one of those countries not yet civilized enough to practice amputation under medical supervision. Truly, there were grave differences in the world on the nature of punishment. Some countries even tossed naughty children into freezers until they turned blue and couldn’t function either rightly or wrongly for years afterward. She’d read that somewhere, maybe People or The Nation. She and M. Callaway subscribed to thirteen magazines, although it used to be twenty-four until he got downsized.
Serena noticed, finally, that the base of the theoretically fake toe was somewhat shredded, even bloody, the thing in its dying state giving final notice as to its reality. A real toe, something dying with neither pageantry nor furtive denials, though sad enough for all of that — just another thing to think about if the doctor ever told you that surgery was in order, that something had to be removed. Would services be required? Diminutive caskets? Notices in the newspaper? The right breast of HoneyLee Gottschalk went home to her Lord today, joining her brother’s pesky wisdom tooth and her father’s gangrenous left leg. It made you wonder exactly what you were mourning when someone close to you died. Something more than their toes, but what, exactly? Naturally enough, Serena was prepared to entertain complex theories of body and mind and identity at that moment, but such theories didn’t usually involve the immediacy of blood and tissue, so it seemed a good idea to bag that opportunity for deep thought and focus on this lonely unit in front of her. This wasn’t the early morning walk Serena had had in mind.
About the Author
G. K. Wuori, a Pushcart Prize winner and Illinois Arts Council Fellow, has published more than a hundred stories in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, and Shenandoah. His novel, An American Outrage, was a Foreword Magazine Book of the Year, and his story collection, Nude In Tub, a Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award Nominee, continues to grow its cult-classic following. He is associate editor of the literary journal Kippis, and currently lives in Sycamore, Illinois, where he writes a monthly column called Cold Iron at www.gkwuori.com.
Now That I’m Ready to Tell You Everything A Novella By GK Wuori Available on June 14, 2011 For Kindle, Nook and other eReaders from Vagabondage Press LLC http://www.vagbondagepress.com