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By Darren Kaminsky

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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three.  The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C.  As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.

Click here for a Chapter Index.

Chapter Seventeen

Wed. June 22

I sat on the floor of a courtroom with no ceiling, above me the red sky swirled with clouds like blood mixing with milk. Stars popped into brilliance with cap-gun like cracks, making me think of exploding light bulbs.

“Oral arguments will begin,” the lipless, lidless, judge said and wiped his desiccated hand across the grey, paper-thin flesh of his forehead.

The Negotiator brings her bulk to a standing position, looks at me, and says, “The Defendant, well known to this court and by contract, as a coward, is today accused of being himself, of doing the types of things that he does, the things that only someone like him would do.”

“Serious charges,” the judge commented, then nodded to himself approvingly. "Very serious charges indeed.”

I looked over and was filled with relief. My attorney was the giant, golden-scaled lizard, now chomping on the end of a cigar that he held with his three-clawed upper feet. His lower half was squeezed into a pair of pin-striped pants of excellent quality. Even his tail was sheathed in light silky Italian wool.

“Opposssable thumb, ssshupossable thumb,” he said in his sibilant rumble, “thiss one iss going to be ahh cakewalk.”

“You think we’ll win?” I asked him.

“Not a chanssse in hell....it’ss a cakewalk for them.”

The judge stared at me with his disconcerting full-dome eyeballs. My knees shook, my throat dried. “How do you answer these charges,” he asked.

“Thiss cassse blowss, kid,” the lizard whispered to me, his forked tongue vibrating like the string on a violin. “The whole thing makesss me want to molt. You may be guilty, but what kind of chance did you have? Look at your home life, how’d they expect you to be anybody but you?”

“I hate me,” I said.

“Yeah kid, I know, but that’s the breaks. You’re stuck with it. You should cop a plea.”

“You think I’ll do time?” I ask.

“Yeah, kid...Life.”

A siren sounded, the entire court turned round and...a beeping began: my alarm clock. I grabbed at it with enough force to knock it off the stool. It hit the ground with a crack and little black plastic bits flew off it. Somehow, and why should I be surprised, the time on the alarm clock was also the time I was supposed to be at work.

Clothes. No hot water. Bike. The house was empty. Not a sound. The day was really lovely...hot, clear and breezy enough to be comfortable. It would be a good ride up to work, I thought. But out front, a black kid was sitting on his bike. I recognized him. It was the baseball kid from Teddy’s block.

“You Nathan?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m supposed to give you this. Teddy wants you to sign it and mail it,” he says and rides off.

It was a heavy green envelope. The return address was my own and it was addressed to my sister, Helda, currently a Goth chick in New York City. Everything was typed. It wasn’t sealed, but it had a stamp on it. Inside, a piece of green stationary read:

 

Held,

Don’t order Aunt Jill’s coffee! It will make you too tired to drive home and I know how tired you get when you drive.

Things here are good; We’ve nearly got the entire place refurbished. Mrs. Bly put in some money and wants us to have everything together on Thursday. We plan to be ready to open promptly at 10 a.m. on that day for breakfast. After the opening, we are having a huge party with Byzantine decorations and a large black elephant as a centerpiece for the table.

Please come; you’ll enjoy picking apart the critics after we get skewered in the morning papers.

Love,

Nathan

It’d been typed and the first letter of certain words were just a little darkened, as if someone had hit a key more than once.

A masterwork of concealment the note was not. The Bly thing might throw someone (Nell is named for her distant cousin, famous 19th century journalist Elizabeth Cochrane who wrote under the name Nelly Bly). The Thursday 10 a.m. thing was plain and clear. And there was a new place down on U street called Mad Stephanie’s that had a big glittery mosaic-covered elephant at the center of the restaurant.

Anyone investigating me could find out that my immediate boss was named Jill. And if I wasn’t going to drink Jill’s coffee whose coffee was I going to drink? And what were we refurbishing? Of course, I’m kind of destroying the note’s purpose by journaling it, but let’s face it, the contents of the note were good only for today; they’d fall apart under any questioning.

I dutifully carried my bike back up the stairs, walked back to the kitchen, signed my name on the letter, put it in the envelope and sealed it. I then called into work and told Chris, my favorite co-worker, that I had a doctor’s appointment and would be late. He asked if I wanted to speak to Jill. “And say what?” I asked.

45 minutes later I was sitting in a velvet booth in Stephanie’s, tapping my fingers on the fake wood table and staring at the fake 19th century showgirl photos on the wall.

Out of strange coincidence or excellent planning, my waitress, a thin pale woman with tattoos of blue and yellow stars running all the way up her arms and disappearing under her frayed black t-shirt sleeves, was the showgirl in the photo above the booth I was in.

I pointed at it and asked if it was her, knowing that it was but wanting the story. “Yeah,” she replied and actually perked up a bit like she was happy to have been noticed. “It was Steph’s idea, all the waitresses were photo’d as showgirls. It was cool. But not much of a gimmick. Half already quit.”

That’s when Nell walked in. I expected her to have dyed her hair or to be wearing a fake beard or trenchcoat, but it was just Nell, like she always looked, except maybe less washed.

“You know, I could have been followed?” I said after hugging her.

“I watched from across the street. If someone’s following you they’re so good that they deserve to get me.”

“You’re not even disguised?”

“Nah, it’d look weird. If I don’t act suspiciously, then no one will get suspicious. It is the DC Police we’re talking about.”

The waitress took our order, then Nell and I leaned into hear each other and talked in a tone that was only just above a whisper. We exchanged stories of what happened the day of the protest, but I told my story earlier in this journal and stapled in Nell’s earlier as well.

By the time we were done, our food was ready and the the waitress deposited plates of eggs in front of us.

“I’m sorry that all this happened,” Nell said. “I should have planned for all this. I should have known.”

“How could you have known?”

“There were rumors. People have always thought the anarchist thing was sexy. There are a bunch of them around these days.”

“Sucks for us.”

“So, how much shit did you have to go through with the police?”

“A lot. I spent the night in jail and was questioned by detectives a couple of times.”

“What about?”

“You.”

“What did you say?”

“That they’ve got the wrong person. That you’re against violence.”

She looked at me and smiled and nodded. “Jean says that you’ve got some pretty explosive photos?”

At hearing Jean’s name, so many things ran through simultaneously that my brain actually stopped. It was a traffic jam with all the thoughts honking and screaming and beeping and the drivers of the thoughts giving each other obscene gestures.

“You’ve talked to Jean?” I asked while trying to keep my composure. She didn’t tell me that.”

“Sorry, had to ask her not to. She’s not being questioned by the police. She wouldn’t have to lie.”

She had a point, but it didn’t make me less angry or annoyed. The brain traffic jam caught fire and became a big seething mound of burning auto wreckage.

“The cops know about that film. They want me to give it to them. They’re threatening me,” I tell her.

“They’ll stop threatening you when the photos are published.”

“How do you know that? How can you be so sure of that? And how can you be sure that they won’t come after me anyway? Or that they’ll be published?” I asked and barely caught myself raising my voice.

“Because I know someone at the DC City Press and it’s a big story for them. They’re going to print a special insert in Sunday’s issue. There will be an article about police brutality and an article about how we’ve been wrongly scapegoated.”

“I don’t think I want to publish. I don’t want people at my job to know about any of this. I don’t want to make myself a target for these cops.”

“Yeah, but if they’re published it’ll take heat off us and put it on the police. And you might get work from it as a photojournalist.”

“I know, but...nothing lately has turned out like it’s supposed to.”

All of a sudden her eyes lit up. “I’ve got it,” she says. “What?” I reply.

“You’ll publish under an assumed name...like Nellie Bly did.”

“It’s a good idea,” I said; it made me feel less...exposed, “...but what name?”

Once more, there were so many thoughts and so many images racing through my head, but this time, no traffic jam. Just empty space...then...rock star names..Ed Jagger, Nathan Thunders...or more photographic, Nathan Robert, Robert Nathan, Nathan Capa. Or, where my family was from, Larus. Nathan Larus wasn’t so bad, but not perfect either. Tevya’s father had been Lazar. Nathan Lazar. Or I could make it more recognizable and make it Nathan Lazarus.

“What about Nathan Lazar or Nathan Lazarus?” I said to Nell.

She was poking at her eggs with a fork and looking displeased as she hit a big piece of shell. “Those’re good,” she said. “But I like Lazarus better. You know...rebirth...resurrection.”

I looked at her strangely. “Oh yeah, wrong book for you,” she said and kept eating.

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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn.  He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.

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