Gertrude Foster: During the party

I woke up with the proverbial splitting headache. Gosh, I wish I didn't have to go to work today. I'd like to stay in bed all day long and watch Days of Our Lives, Ellen, and Oprah. But no, I have to be a grown-up girl and face 'em.

Okay, I managed to shower, get dressed (navy blue suit, prim and proper, with a white blouse), and walk the dog. I even managed to get in my '97 Toyota Corolla and drive down I-75 into Atlanta. I even managed to park the car in the garage off Peachtree Street and get my Starbucks. Always the same -- venti white chocolate mocha. Love it, even if my wasteline's pushing at my skirts. Thank God, the caffeine's kicking in and my headache's going away. And then I walk into the office ...

... and they all yell, "Surprise!"

You can't imagine my horror. It's bad enough to be celebrating your thirtieth birthday, but for all the people you've spent the last six years with to know it, and to scream it out at the top of their lungs at 9:00 a.m. on a Friday morning ... absolute Hell on Earth. And on top of that, my headache charges right back and hits me behind the eyes. And I've got to smile and pretend I'm surprised, I'm happy, oh thank you everyone for thinking of me on my thirtieth birthday! Behind my smiles I just want to crawl into a wastebasket.

And then Robert from Human Resources comes in. Gosh, Robert, I've been trying to date for six months. He thought I was twenty-five and now he (like everyone else) knows I'm thirty. Old. Old and single, an old maid. But he doesn't seem to mind, in fact his juicy, fleshy kiss on my left cheek tells me, "go for it!"

So I no longer have a headache.

Claude Archer: It made me uneasy

Claude tallied up the man's order on the register. $6.49 for a package of AA batteries. $5.99 for Head 'n' Shoulders shampoo. $0.85 for a package of Juicy Fruit gum -- 8 sticks; 17 sticks for $1.20 but this man didn't get it, even though Claude would’ve recommended the savings, per-stick-wise. And $899.00 for a Smith-and-Wesson .33 revolver. He took a good look at the man, just like the state asked him to do, and asked him for ID, please. It's 2018, after all. One more year to go and we'll be rid of Obama. Then maybe we'll get another Texas Republican in there and be done with all these ID checks.

The 6-foot-tall guy with the big hook nose, pointy hazel eyes, Buster Brown hair, thick dark stubble, and a crescent-shaped scar on his right cheek gave him the ID. The Florida driver's license said John Smith, born 1973, resident of Hialeah. What's the forty-five year old man doing this far from home, Claude wondered? It's Waco, Texas. Enough said, anyway. The ID checks out with the computer, too -- no convicted felons matching the description or the ID. So he rang up the tab and gave the guy his batteries, shampoo, gum, and a gun. He saw John Smith leave.

Claude turned back to the lottery machine, printing out tickets for the bouffant-hairdoed lady after Mr. Smith. Ten tickets for the Texas Lotto. Dang, the machine stuck on ticket #8. The woman screamed.

Claude scowled before turning around. "Ain't nothing but a jam, lady, settle down!"

He felt the tip of the gun at his back. "Don't move," the man behind the gun told him, "or you're roadkill." Claude’s breathing stopped and Satan clutched his stomach.

"You wanna tell me about sleeping with my wife, Helen? And then maybe you and I will go out back here." Claude didn't want to go out back. There were broken glass, sticky tar, and 3-foot tall weeds back there.

Rose Lindenhurst: She meant well, but ...

"Oh, sweetheart! Let's get out of the car. I want to show Arlene and Charles my window blinds. Stop the car --" Rose said.

"No, I'd rather we go straight home now,” Bernie said.

"What a drag you are! I'm pissed at you."

"Honey, we just spent an hour and a half cleaning your apartment. I'm tired and I want to go home now and chill."

"Well, don’t even think about sex. I'm feeling mad. Why can't we just take ten fucking minutes out of our day and show Arlene and Charles the window blinds?"

"Because I'm tired and I wanna go home! And aren't we supposed to go to Alice's to babysit your nephew at 3:30? It's already 2:00. I want at least a little bit of time for us to ... you know ..."

"So that's what this is all about, huh? You wanna get laid? That's awful selfish of you! Arlene and Charles have been wanting to see my blinds for weeks and this was a great opportunity to do it."

"We came down in the elevator together, they didn't say word one about it."

"They were just being polite, waiting for my invitation."

"So what's more important, showing them your window blinds or having our Saturday afternoon of luxuriating after sex? We've got to babysit little Mark at 3:00. Yeah, I do wanna get laid. Hardly a crime, especially since I just gave you two hours, cleaning your apartment so your sister could use it for her big date tonight."

"What's really going on, honey?"

"Oh, never mind, I'll just sit in the car. You show them the blinds.”

And thus did the pattern continue.

Merlin Atkins: The ashes

Merlin opened the oven door and, as always, winced as the heat blasted his face. But it had to be done, just like clockwork, his weekly ritual. He wheeled the gurney over positioned it, and slid Bobby Planet’s corpse into the incinerator. Merlin felt beads of sweat on his forehead as he closed the door to the oven.

He sat down and put his head between his knees. The seduction was always easy, especially this time, Bobby so enthusiastic to have sex with an older daddy type. Kneeling over Bobby just as he climaxed, the strangulation put Merlin over the top – but the cleanup had really pissed Merlin off. Bobby had made such a mess. Incredible that a gay man, even a young one, didn’t take care of himself before going out for a hook-up. Merlin would remember next time to make sure that his victim douched before they had sex.

He looked up when he heard a voice upstairs from his entryway, a squeaky soprano.

“Oh yoo-hoo, Mr. Atkins,” his neighbor, the inevitable Mrs. Hackshaw, said. “I want to talk with you about the city’s plans for the oak tree between our lots.”

He heard the stompy footsteps of her high heels on his linoleum floor. Damn – he’d left the door to the basement open.

“Are you downstairs, Mr. Atkins?”

Merlin grabbed a hammer and concealed it behind his back. This time he’d have to improvise.

Hank Rydall: In the street

Hank plodded up the steepest section of Lombard Street, right before that windy street all the Ohio tourists always came to see.

He’d had no idea any city street could be so steep, and so arduous to climb. Ever since he’d escaped from that Getty Station on Route 99, after clubbing that guy with his shotgun, his leg had felt like jelly – numb, weak, and somehow detached from his body. He’d made it as far as Modesto and had even snatched the purse of a forgetful lady with pink lipstick and a black bun of hair on the back of her head. For all his effort, he’d only gotten $87 in her wallet.

But then the transmission died on his ’76 Plymouth Valiant and he left it on the side of the road. He hitchhiked up to ‘Frisco with an overweight trucker who had a black mole on the side of his face. Two hairs grew out of that mole. Hank wanted to throw up, looking at it.

The police wouldn’t find him here. No way, not in San Francisco. It was a beautiful city, Hank had to admit – everywhere up and out was blue, everywhere down was green. And he could just breathe the clean air from the bay … he wanted to hide here forever, no one from his past – not Mama or Daddy, not Uncle Harry or Aunt Ruth. No one from Akron would ever come out here.

He topped the hill and looked down the windy street at all the rented Four Tauruses and Oldsmobile Aleros, practically stopped on the hill to look at the houses and window baskets. Who was that, half way down the hill? No, it couldn’t be – yes, it was – it was Horace Matthews, his high school swim coach, the one with the hairy crotch that always peaked out the top of his bathing suit. Tight jeans and a black t-shirt – this was the first time Hank had ever seen Coach Matthews wearing street clothes. What was he doing in San Francisco?

Marie Divisadero: One thing he did right

“But surely, Marie,” Helen said, dealing the next hand of gin rummy in their game – Helen had one six hands, Marie just two – “you can say at least one nice thing about Joe.”

“If you give me a week,” Marie said, groaning under her breath, “maybe I can think of something. But at least a week, Helen –“

“Why’d you marry him if he was such a creep?”

“Because he swept me off my feet and turned into the Tasmanian Devil two weeks after we got married.”

“Oh, come on – say something nice about him.”

“Okay. He might’ve cheated on me with my own mother, he might’ve embezzled fifty thousand from my father’s plastic vomit and party favor supply company, he might’ve married a Panamanian woman while I was pregnant with our third son, he might’ve slapped me every week in the last year of our marriage while he drank away our life savings, and he might’ve called my boss at Bell South and talked about the pink shade of my private parts – but at least he was on time.”

Helen burst out laughing. Marie started laughing. She who laughs last, laughs last.

“That’s right, laugh, Helen. At least the bastard was on time.”

Hank Rydall: It was an accident

“But it was an accident!” Hank said, lying on the grimy gray floor in the gas station bathroom, somewhere between Bakersfield and Fresno. He stared up into the shotgun of the toothless man with the sandpaper complexion, bony frame, and that glass eye that wandered left to right and back.

“You pretty Ohio blond, you’re getting justice for what you done killed back in that Motel 6,” the man said. Hank wondered how he could’ve known – or tracked him down, two hundred miles away, and followed him into the bathroom at a Getty station somewhere just off Route 99.

The man took aim, put his finger on the trigger, and then the steel door opened behind him and knocked him off balance. The gun went off and Hank felt the air pressure pop somewhere to the left of his ear. The man hit his head on the sink and the gun fell out of his grasp – Hank grabbed it, scampered up against the wall behind him. The woman stood at the door, screaming. Hank glanced at her – some plastic surgery job, probably from Malibu or Santa Barbara, probably driving a Mercedes or Jaguar.

He aimed the shotgun at the man with his head in the sink, groaning unintelligible words. The man slipped to the ground.

“Call the police,” Hank ordered the woman. “This man tried to kill me.”

Hank panicked – no, she couldn’t call the police. And he needed to kill the man, because he’d talk and they’d come and get him. He stared at the plastic surgery job. He’d have to kill her, too – and the gas station attendant who’d probably overheard the whole thing. But no, the Motel 6 … that was enough.

He ran out of the bathroom, jumped in the ’76 Plymouth Valiant, and headed north on Route 99. He needed to get out of state, and fast.

Merle Atkins: A death

Merlin and Cathy laughed at the sixtyish overweight couple sitting at the next booth, arguing over which household chores they should do on the weekend – raking leaves or taking down the screens, mopping the floors or putting away the patio furniture?

“Thank God we don’t have to worry about boring stuff like this,” Cathy said. “My biggest question this weekend is which gym will I go to on Saturday and what dress will I wear on our second date?”

Merlin knew there wouldn’t be a second date, but he went along. “As long as it’s showing skin, I’m fine with it. Let’s you and me head back to my place.”

An hour later, they’d gotten back to Merlin’s house in Lake Merced. He kept Cathy waiting in the living room while he caught up on texts – there would be Julie for coffee next Monday, Stephanie for dinner on Wednesday, Alex for a sex date on Thursday. No biggie, just a normal week.

“Come on, let’s you and me get cozy in the bedroom.” Ten minutes later he was thrusting inside her, hearing those infernal grunts women made when they were getting it – so Merlin just thrust harder and harder, and shifted his arms from her ankles to the mattress, leaned in to kiss her, and then he grabbed her neck with both hands and put all his weight into it.

All he heard was a low-pitched gurgle that lasted five seconds. Good – the stiff mattress and plywood under it worked. Her neck broke. Not even a trace of blood this time. Good, again – petite, as he always chose, he’d dump the body in his van, take it down to Half Moon Bay, toss it over the cliff. By next week, the police would be looking for someone named Kyle who worked for Wells Fargo and lived in Pacific Heights. He’d already have gone through Julie, Stephanie, and Alex by then.

Claude Archer: A birth

I’m feeling sad and blue this evening, as I had sinful thoughts about Larry the plumber who came to fix that pesky leak. So I think I’ll pray to Jesus for salvation.

“Claude,” my mother called from the kitchen, which was something like four corners and a staircase away from me in my bedroom, “come down here now and help me fold the laundry. And then I need you to take out the garbage, boy.”

I wish my mother were less bossy, but she is my mother and I love her despite her character defects. I just wish she went to church with me rather than to that heathen Episcopal Church in the city. She needs to be born again and accept that Jesus as her savior, not listen to lazy Episcopalians who believe in gay bishops and drinking wine for communion. Me, I don’t know which is worse – drinking wine in God’s house or accepting a ‘homothexual’ (that’s what Pastor Johnson, our devout leader at church and at yoga classes) as your bishop.

And … gasp … Mama plays gin rummy with the other church ladies on Tuesday afternoons.

I didn’t feel like doing Mama’s chores, so I yelled down the stairs. “I’m busy, Mama, writing my journal for the evening. I’ll do it in the morning,” I said, knowing full well she couldn’t leave chores undone for the night.

I knelt by the side of the bed, summoning up the words to pray for forgiveness about those sinful Larry thoughts. But Larry’s stubbly chin and armpit hair peeking out of his wife-beater tank top got my crotch all tingly and stiff. So I reached inside my pants and wanked on it for a minute. It felt something like a birth – something new, wrinkly, and smelly.

Now I can pray for forgiveness.

Gertrude Foster: The story in a nutshell

The bus to Kearney would be two hours late, the Greyhound driver announced sometime after the sun went down. Gertrude sighed and looked out the window at the dusty flat blackness of the Plains.

“Don’t you worry, ma’am, we’ll get there soon enough,” the wispy Negro maid with a receding chin and Eleanor Roosevelt overbite said, a bit too cheerful for Gertrude to tolerate. But tolerate it, she chose to do.

“I know that, young lady, don’t you worry about me. I’ve been on this bus to Kearney way too much to expect it to be on time. Ever a once.”

Gertrude wanted to be nice, but how come she could never get that tinny tone of annoyance out of her voice when she actually was trying to be nice? Maybe she just didn’t give a D.

“You from there, ma’am?”

“I was born there. My mother and father – well, before they died – they spent their whole lives there. I’m going to see my sister who’s ill.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the young woman said, her chin receding even further into her neck.

“Don’t be. She and I haven’t spoken for a decade, not since before we buried Mama. You see –“

Gertrude hesitated, but what did it matter? She might as well tell the story and entertain the young lady. She seemed perfectly harmless, right?

“You see,” Gertrude continued, determined to get it out in a single sentence, “my sister slept with my ex-husband, so I haven’t spoken with that cheap whore twelve years now. I’m just going back to Kearney to make sure the bitch dies in pain.”

“Oh, dear,” the woman said. She cast her eyes away – of course, Gertrude thought, she didn’t want to get into the middle of it all.

“Now don’t you worry,” Gertrude said. “All’s right with the world. Once she croaks.”

Rose Lindenhurst: In the bottom drawer

“Louise,” Rose said, shuffling the Brussels sprouts to one side of her plate, “I saved myself until my wedding night.”

Louise put her fork down. She raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips. “And several years beyond, I suppose,” Louise said.

“No, Herbie and I had our special time of the evening for years. Right after Walter Cronkite and just before dinner. He called it Appetizers and Hors d’Oeuvres.”

“Are you telling me, Rose Lindenhurst,” Louise said, shaking her head, “that you did it … every night?”

“Oh, not every night. There was that one time in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was shot. And then when Herbie had to go in for that gall bladder removal. We kept a record of the exceptions in the dresser’s bottom drawer. Just those two.”

“And when was your last time, oh romantic one?” Louise shoveled in a mouthful of Brussels sprouts – her favorites, Rose knew.

Rose looked down at her plate. Should she tell Louise? They’d only been roommates for three months.

“If you must know,” Rose said, “We were doing it the evening Herbie had his heart attack. You should’ve seen the look on the paramedics faces when they came.”

Ned Chancellor: The texture

Raised voices grabbed the attention of all within hearing range.

“No, this isn’t rayon,” Ned said, sighing out his mouth like a balloon letting out all the air. “It’s nylon, you nincompoop.”

“Don’t call me a nincompoop,” Will said, bringing his eyebrows together and his mouth into two straight lines, “you pompous ass.”

“Break it up over there,” Jon said, walking over from his office to see what all the fuss was about. “We’re trying to meet a deadline here, guys.”

Ned jumped in first. “He started it.”

Will felt the need to rebut his Excellency’s argument. “No, he started it. I just made a remark about the material in that dress he’s wearing today.”

“Polyester, of course,” Jon said. “And we’ll be hearing nothing about it.”

“Nope, Jon,” Ned said, rolling his eyes. “I’m afraid you’re wrong. It’s nylon.”

“Rayon!”

“Polyester!”

“Look at the tag in the bag, douche bags. It’s nylon. And can’t you feel the difference between them? You’d think we knew nothing about fabrics. After all, we only work at a fashion magazine.”

Ned lifted his nose up and walked back to his desk. It always felt so good to be right.

Claude Archer: I'm listening

Claude sat at the card table in the deacon’s room, his hands laid out on in front of him, palms down. The young woman with green-and-red braces on her teeth and dull brown eyes that looked like flying saucers sat across from him.

“Tell me how the attack happened, miss,” Claude said, “and we’ll discuss your options before you see the bishop.”

She cast her eyes down and puffed her cheeks out. “I was walking down Market Street, sometime after midnight. This man grabbed my elbow from behind and pulled me into the alley between Haight and Octavia. He began to –“

“Describe him as well as you can. It might help the police identify him.”

“Short and muscular, black hair and a beard, hairy forearms. I remember all the hair, even when he dropped his pants,” she said, her voice wavering to the falsetto that precedes a crying fit. “I can still feel his hair on my crotch.”

Claude found himself transfixed by the image. “Can you describe his face?”

“Piercing eyes, don’t remember the color. Probably brown, given all the dark hair. Wide jaw line, square chin, high-bridged nose. When he was thrusting, he grunted in a deep voice.”

She broken down and covered her face in her hands. Claude reached over and put his hand on her head, so small and soft, so tender and yet so broken. A wave of sympathy rolled over him. But he couldn’t get the image of the man’s thrusting out of his mind, and he felt a strong pulsation in his crotch, and the rising of a bulge in his pants.

“I’m so sorry, miss, let’s pray to God for your soul.”

Rose Lindenhurst: For the first time

“Well, the first time with Herbie was wonderful,” Rose said, putting a soft mark on her consonants, as she wanted to convey a high degree of happiness – “but it took me five years before I knew what made your eyes roll into the back of your head.”

Louise roared in laughter.

“Five years, Rose?” she said. “Are you serious?”

“How’d it happen for you, then?” Rose said, holding her hand to her neck.

Louise tapped her finger on her chin. “Let me see. I think it was with Charlie Jenkins in the back of his Wildcat – summer of ’66 in Dubuque. Yes – but wait a minute. There was Chester Benson behind the bleachers at the stadium in the summer of ’65. Or was it Conrad Wilson in his parents’ bedroom when they were visiting their Aunt Miriam in the hospital, suffering from diverticulitis?”

“Try to narrow it down, Louise.”

“Oh, who knows. Who cares? All I know is, his name began with a C.”

“Well, I waited until my wedding night,” Rose said, arching her eyebrows.”

“You miss goody two shoes,” Louise said.

“You slut,” Rose answered.

Marie Divisadero: Waiting

Nurse Gertler walked away from the waiting room. Marie heard the metallic clip-clop of her heels on the linoleum-tiled floor, the echoes fading away until nothing. She knew full well the nurse hadn’t told her everything.

“Nurse Gertler,” she called out of the room, projecting her Maude Findlay-like alto into the hallway – thank goodness for the linoleum – “come back here a moment, please.”

Nurse Gertler had already gone twenty feet down the hallway. She shrugged her shoulders and turned around. She squinted her eyes at Marie.

“What is it, Mrs. Divisadero?”

“I was just thinking,” Marie said, folding her hands in front of her and walking toward the nurse, in a deliberate, thoughtful kind of way so as to be accommodating, “you said my sister was in stable condition, but if that were really the case, wouldn’t she be out of recovery by now?”

“Not necessarily, Mrs. Divisadero. You have nothing to worry about. She’s simply being observed until she’s regained full consciousness. Now please go back to the waiting room. We’ll have more information for you momentarily.”

Nurse Gertler turned away from her again.

“But Nurse Gertler,” Marie said, hoping to stop her from walking away. “Why hasn’t she regained consciousness? You haven’t told me what’s keeping her asleep all these hours. It sounds like something’s severely wrong to me.”

Nurse Gertler sighed and closed her eyes. “Mrs. Divisadero, I don’t know. All I know is that she’s stable and in recovery. You’ll have to simply wait. That’s all there is to it.”

With that, the nurse turned for the third time and walked rapidly away. Marie grunted and went back to the waiting room. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar were interviewing Barack Obama. Marie guessed that if one of them had been in the waiting room, their nurse would’ve told them the truth.

Hank Rydall: Right and wrong

Hank put Buffy behind him when he drove away with her $3,700 life savings the next morning from the Pasadena Motel 6 in Grandma Harriett’s ’76 Plymouth Valiant. Thank God – it’d only been a rusted carburetor, and the mechanic at the Shell station didn’t detect any twitch in Hank’s facial expression, any uncontrolled flutter in his voice, or notice the bulging whites in Hank’s eyes. He kept his agitated nerves under control.

Thank God the motel had an empty meat refrigerator. In the dark Hank had managed to throw the bodies in there – and frozen, they wouldn’t smell. Nobody would notice until opening it for some other reason … would be days, even weeks, and Hank would be long gone by then.

He made his way north on I-210, then I-5, and passed Santa Clarita, then brushed by Bakersfield, and made his way north. San Francisco – he’d head up there. He could remain anonymous there among all the Haight hippies … even if his blond crew cut, Izods, and pressed jeans didn’t exactly fit in. He’d figure out a way to hide right out in the open.

He’d thought about going for Ohio, but no – too much evidence back at the Motel 6, too many people knew he came from Akron. Once they found the bodies, they’d be interviewing Mama and Pops – Hank felt a white-hot twinge in his heart at the thought of their expressions, when the F.B.I. told them he was wanted for questioning. And then he felt another twinge, as he realized, he could never go back to Akron.

He made his way westward through Livermore and Hayward, then north to Oakland, and across the Bay Bridge. There it was – the San Francisco he’d heard tell of. Foggy, gray, drizzly, cloudy, cold – not the City by the Bay of his dreams, all blue sky and Golden Gate. But he’d find a place to hide right here. He had $3,640 left – a chance at a second start.

Merle Atkins: Fire

Merle sighed, drained of all energy. He’d finished the task. But killing was always the easy part, the part he enjoyed. And the rush he got when hearing Elliott’s screechy screams, the guttural sounds he made as the axe went into his legs, his arms, and then finally silenced when Merle beheaded him. Merle sat down on the stainless steel chair he’d set up.

Thank goodness for industrial-strength plastic. Merle gave himself five minutes to relax, let his pulse come back to its usual fifty-four beats per minute. He thought about the evening with Elliott, innocent enough. A typical date, dinner way down south at Pacifico at a darkly-lit restaurant nestled up in the hills. No one would recognize Elliott when his picture was flashed on the news in a few days. Maybe not for a few weeks, depending on how long it took for someone to report him missing.

They’d never find the body, that much was certain. Merle began the hard work of this project. He wrapped the body in its plastic. He wrapped his tools in more plastic – never wash them, just discard them was his rule. The less evidence in Merle’s vicinity, the better. And he pulled the plastic off the walls, let it fall, and then he stepped back – onto more plastic, and unbuttoned his plastic suit, let it fall. Then he reached up for the bar, pulled the button, and all the plastic wrapped onto and compressed itself, leaving a sterile, sealed outer covering. Merle pushed the button – the trap door opened, and the package fell into the back of his pickup.

Merle covered the back of his pickup and drove to the cabin seventeen miles away, and dumped the package into the incinerator. Before leaving, he turned it on.

Hank Rydall: Making it last

Hank just knew she was the one. Oh, how Buffy made his toes curl upward! And oh, how he felt those little tingling sensations climb up from his esophagus into his throat and, best of all, massage the back of his throat! And oh, how good she felt when she cocked her head left to right and giggled with that “Oh, that’s so weird!” she usually bubbled out with when Hank gave commentary on how different Pasadena was from Dubuque.

Why, Hank marveled at the miracle of it all – finding the girl of his dreams only two weeks after arriving on his cross-country trek in Grandma Harriett’s ’76 Plymouth Valiant. Why, the car had made it all the way to Pasadena before giving up the ghost after 35 stalwart years on the farm. So Hank had plopped himself down at the closest Motel 6, where Buffy worked, and asked for a job.

Buffy had been so sweet about it all, for gosh sakes – why, she’d offered him a free breakfast with his $9.95 per night room. And boy, she’d taken up residence with him only on the second night and reduced it to $7.95. What miracles ensued … and even though she’d insisted he romp around with her (though Hank scolded himself, he’d promised he’d wait until marriage, but Buffy was just so, so sweet) … he’d ended up enjoying it like nothing he’d ever experienced.

And God bless Buffy for her discretion – why, she always left him alone during the day, especially those times when the truckers rolled in from Bakersfield, and also in the early evening when that mechanic from the Getty station across the street got off work. She was just, well, a miracle beyond belief in that she always knew the right thing to do.

And too bad, then, that Hank had run out of money after Buffy asked him for a loan “to pay for my community college tuition,” even though Hank hadn’t known she attended community college, and for what degree? It didn’t matter to Hank, just that she was close enough to ask him, and of course he loaned her the $280 out of the $340 left from his grandmother’s inheritance. Grandma Harriett would certainly approve …

… until the following evening when Hank found Buffy in his own bedroom with that mechanic from the Getty station across the street who’d just gotten off work, and Hank had yanked the television screen off the wall and smashed it on their heads, killing both of them. And then Hank wondered where he’d go, what with the ’76 Plymouth Valiant gone kaput and all.

Rose Lindenhurst: Nobody wants to hear about ...

Louise dealt this bridge hand. The four women went around Rose’s card table, draped with the finest white lace from her Duluth grandmother, and bid one spades, two diamonds, and finally Trudy’s three spades when everyone else passed. For once, Rose wasn’t the dummy – this hand, it was Barbara.

“Barbara, would you refill our teacups?” Rose said. “Bring in another plate of scones while you’re at it. Girls, would you believe I ran into Wilma Merkelstein at the Guthrie production of All My Sons last Friday?”

Louise gave an Aha, Trudy grunted out an Uhum, and Barbara muttered an Isn’t that interesting from the kitchen beyond.

“I’ve never seen her looking better. Why, every time I see her, she looks five years younger. It must be that twenty-nine year old boyfriend she found at the last Memorial Day picnic –“

“Hogwash, Rose,” Trudy said. “Wilma Merkelstein is sixty-seven years old. She’s had a little help in the nip-and-tuck department. She needs a little more than a daily ‘vitamin boost’ from Brian Benton.”

“What do you mean?” Rose asked.

“Oh, come on. Surely you know she’s had a facelift, an eye job, a nose job, and filled her forehead with Botox,” Louise said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Why, that just can’t be true. She seems, so ... well, so ... level-headed. Why would Wilma need to do ... that?”

“So you don’t approve?” Barbara said, coming back into the room with the plate of scones. Louise and Trudy grabbed two up.

“Well, it’s not my place to disapprove, but aren’t facelifts for New York and Florida housewives? I see them all the time, but not us Minneapolis ladies. It just seems so, well so, unnatural for a Minnesota farm girl.”

“And what’s your natural hair color, Rose?” Louise said. “Were you born with that shade of blonde?”

“Okay,” Rose said, casting a card down on the table. “Ace of spades on this trick.”

Claude Archer: I can't get over it

“If I were you,” Claude told Jimmy, the young man with the nose ring and the Divine-Sylvester shoulder tattoo that the deacon had brought in from the Tenderloin, “I’d embrace my savior and repent of this sinful life.”

Jimmy smirked and looked down at Claude’s crotch. “Ah, what’s it to you, butt licker?”

Claude closed his eyes. Sinners were always casting stones, but why should he? Wasn’t it all about forgiveness and seeking a better life?

“God will forgive you for that, boy,” he said, looking at the young man. Willowy, yes, this Jimmy with the blond hair and smooth shape. Those narrow hips – reminded Claude something of the girl he dated in Pomona until she ran off with the football captain and got pregnant. That’d been hard for Claude to get over – but of course, he had.

“Aw, come on, tell me you haven’t rimmed a few hairy asses. We’re in San Francisco. I’ll give you a freebee sometime ...”

“You see, Jimmy, it’s propositions like this that get you into trouble. You need to forsake this life of sin and embrace Jesus as your savior.”

“Like, whatever,” Jimmy said, standing. “Only savior I’ve got is me. I just came in here for the free food.”

“Don’t leave us, Jimmy. Don’t go back to a life on the street.”

“It ain’t so bad when I look around this place.” Jimmy turned and left.

Claude sighed. The young ones were always so hard to teach. If only they could listen – and come into the fold where he could protect them from the world.

Marie Divisadero: Directly in front of me

He did it to give me a stroke. I’m going to pop a blood vessel over this. How could that man taunt me in this childish, bull-headed way? I just can’t believe any human would treat another with such ... such ... such flagrant disrespect.

How could he have left the ketchup on the countertop after lunch? And ... gasp, even worse ... without putting the lid back on?

Didn’t he know that there was a cockroach issue on the other side of the hill from here? Why, they’d be over here any day, Marie was certain of it – ready to attack, ready to gawk at us while we shower, ready to scurry up our legs when we’re serving rack of lamb to the neighborhood grand poobahs, ready to deposit their eyes in our eyebrows while we sleep.

“Juan,” Marie said, putting that tinny tone in her voice. She wanted him to know she was pissed. “Would you come in here a moment.”

Her roly-poly bald husband with the sandpaper beard sauntered into the kitchen, swinging one arm in front of the other. Like he was king of the castle or something.

“Honey, what’s up?” He squinted and smiled. Juan needed to go to the dentist, but he wouldn’t listen to her prodding and make an appointment.

“For once,” Marie said, containing her voice on an even keel, “would you put the lid on the ketchup and back in the fridge after lunch?”

“Oh, if it’s only that, sure. Next time. Hey listen, I’m watching the game in the den. Gotta get back to it.”

He swung by her and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, popped it, and through the metal fliptop onto the counter – and headed back to the den.

Damn that man. He just doesn’t understand, does he?

Merle Atkins: The measurement

Thirty-two inch waist. Forty-three inches in the chest. Fifteen inch biceps, if you could call them biceps at all. And thirty-six inches in the stomach. The guy probably wanted to lose weight at the gym, but never got around to it. Too many Christmases, birthdays, and T.G.I.F. dinners on every night except Friday. One hundred ninety-five pounds, five feet nine inches tall, forty-one years old.

Merle had carefully solicited the man’s measurements. This one was two years younger, but he was out of shape by comparison to Merle's rock-hard frame. Good - he'd handle him well. And he always had to know sizing, so that he could get the materials prepared correctly. There would be the industrial plastic bags, the towels, the elastic tape, the arm and leg bandages. And the right set of tools. A machete, a serrated knife, and a steel saw.

They had to be the right size, too. And the anchor he bought – this one had to support two hundred pounds. He never used an anchor heavier than he needed. Why put that kind of strain on his lower back?

And then there was the decision about which vehicle to use, the one he’d take to the wharf south of Baton Rouge, right on Lake Pontchartrain. Would it be the Suburban or the Escape? Depended ... for this man, the Suburban. He’d have to lay him out flat afterwards.

Okay, his shopping list was made out. He and the man had a date this evening. They’d be going to Hamburger Mary’s. Merle needed to be prepared once they entered the dungeon.

Ned Chancellor: I'm at work

Ned scowled, and as a way to release the pressure in his head, he let out all the air from his lungs and breathed slowly in through the nose. It didn’t work. He still felt the ice-cold daggers in his forehead.

“You know,” he said to Anna, sitting next to him putting the finishing touches on the Aschlund Library’s women’s bathroom design, “Wilbert Humpkins can’t draft a blueprint to save his life. Just look at this crap.”

“But he’s been with the firm nearly thirty years,” Anna said. “Everybody loves his work.”

“Well, it’s crap. Didn’t you hear what I said? All crap.”

Anna took a look at the blueprint. “It’s true, I wouldn’t design a lobby this way, but I don’t see any real problem with it.”

“It looks like that stuff they put up in universities back in the ‘70s. Concrete and brown-framed windows. Crap, all crap.”

“Bring it up in the review meeting, Ned.”

“I intend to. It’s about time these old folks yielded to those of us who’re younger and smarter. I mean, for God’s sake ...”

Ned through the blueprint on his desk, face down, scowled again, and headed to the lounge for some coffee. Maybe he’d run across Debra. She had perky brown hair, great posture, and leaned into Ned when they talked. Ned gave himself a better than even chance that she’d sleep with him.

Gertrude Foster: When I was fifteen

Gertrude tried to remember back to a time when she didn’t roll her eyes at a man’s “so what’s a nice lady like you doing ...” or smirk with one edge of her mouth down and one cheek protruding at a teenager’s “I meant to take the garbage out, honest” or yell at the TV news anchorman when the latest president took full responsibility for the latest scandal but insisted, he knew nothing about it, it was all the underlings.

When could those moments have been?

“Miz Foster,” Velma called from the kitchen, “your dinner’s ready. Fried chicken thighs, peas, and rice tonight.”

“My favorite,” Gertrude answered, projecting her voice from the den all the way across the River Oaks house to the kitchen. She rolled her eyes, smirked down one corner of the mouth and puffed out the other cheek. “Can’t wait.”

There was this fifteen-year-old girl called Trudie back in Wichita, she danced at ballet recitals and received lots of staccato applauses, smiles from church strangers, pinches on the cheek from her parents’ society friends wearing white gloves, veils, and purple hats. The little dear, they’d say. And Gertrude beamed bright pink cheeks to them, liquid azure eyes, and milky white teeth – both sides of her mouth up, both cheeks relaxed. And no eyes rolling ...

She walked over to the kitchen and opened the door. Velma stood at the sink, scrubbing the wooden cutting board. Velma turned her head toward Gertrude, but kept her eyes down, somewhere between Gertrude’s breasts and nowhere.

“Oh, what a surprise,” Gertrude said, freezing her eyes, mouth, and cheeks into place, “chicken, rice, and peas for Sunday dinner.”

Allow me to introduce myself (yet again)

What comes next?

The manuscript has been frozen, my publisher has submitted it to the printer, the books have arrived, 143 buyers have been acquired, softbacks have been shipped, and I’ve gotten ego-pumping rave reviews from my readers. “Agnes Limerick, Free and Independent” is now a part of the past – creatively speaking, of course. Now it has become a product that I must hock, hock, hock. Please buy it! Please buy it! Pretty, pretty please!

What no one particularly knows is that I cannot stand selling anything, because in order to be a good salesman, you must manipulate another human being to do something he or she may or may not want to do. And that I cannot do.

Agnes (the novel, the story, the character, the altogether) is a product of the Writing Salon. It began with Writing Salon courses, it was nurtured by Writing Salon teachers and students, and it became a mature manuscript during the evolution of more than a dozen Round Robins. I didn’t dedicate the novel to the Writing Salon, but I would’ve – if I hadn’t come across someone, the piano teacher who became my inspiration for the character Brian Larney, who really, really deserved the dedication more than anyone. No one knows that I struggled with the dedication, either!

I love being a part of the Writing Salon community. This stretch between Round Robins has been particularly long – what is it, six weeks since the last one ended, Jane – but I have a confession. There are days I just don’t feel like being creative, like creating new characters and new storylines in response to Jane’s prompts. But I do it anyway, because gosh darn it all, I just gotta (that’s not my voice – but it’s someone’s whose cute and perky but male and old). No one knows that I, too, fear the blank page – but only because as I get older, I tire more quickly, and it takes more for me to confront a new job, a new task.

What comes next? Do I write a second novel, now that the first is published?