Thursday, March 7, 2024

Rainer Men's club (A)

It seemed the afternoon meeting at the Conservatory had moved to the Rainer House, a men’s club in downtown Seattle. Formalities of the outside world were shed at the entrance with briefcases and full-length coats. It was a place where one could enjoy a hard game of squash, a swim, or simply speak freely about business and stocks without the medaling of wives and other underlings who felt fit to speak out of turn on subjects they knew nothing of. It was the last fraternal outpost, where a man could be…a man. Membership came at a considerable cost and the working class could not afford it, which was not accidental. Cultural lines were drawn not so much by law, but by money. Permission was granted or denied by it. Money was not something everyone could come by, and for good reason; money provided access to the social tiers of society. Much of the color and passion of the Irish and Italians had amalgamized themselves into American culture a generation before. Their thuggish infiltration to government, public service, and civil duty had a top-down effect into the fabric of American culture. Both groups proved themselves as formidable pseudo-Anglos and thusly, accepted, so long as no one had an accent or made heavy mention of culture or religion publicly. Coloreds and other immigrants had housing jurisdictions in neighborhoods kept separate from whites which meant that even if any of them could afford membership, social grace would be limited to nil in tolerance of their presence within. Jews kept to their own clubs of culture and didn’t care if they were excluded or not. The Chinese had their own parts of town by the docks where one could buy fish, spices and fabrics while others could find their way into alcoves draped in a labyrinth of curtains which kept secret rooms with women and pipes filled with hypnotic smoke where a man could drift away into his dreams and never return. Andre Bane liked things this way. He believed that people found their place in the culture by a combination of breeding and hard work. Could a man work his way into social culture, in a way, but he would always have a “smell” to him.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

A train whistle blew and steam puffed out the top of the smokestack as it paused in the station while passengers unloaded. A pair of snakeskin shoes stepped onto the unloading platform. A Gentleman with a thin moustache, well-manicured fingernails and a pinky ring extended his red umbrella. He whistled to the baggage boy and was quickly handed a small suitcase in the same shade as his umbrella. The train whistle blew, and the train departed from the station. From overhead the rain came down. And in a sea of black umbrellas, it was Hugh Balcrees red umbrella that could not be ignored!

The final say

The tip tap of ladies’ high heels rang through the Conservatory breezeway and the fabric of Anne's chemise dress swished behind her as she marched with stern intention. “These things take time Anne! Oh, please don’t make a stink!” James shuffled behind, flinging benign comforts to calm her. “Things are already cattywampus with your father’s estate…couldn’t you just wait a month? The money will come through! Does it really make a difference?” Anne turned on her heels with a serpentine stare, “A difference? Oh James, it makes all the difference!” Mr. Bane didn’t like people bursting into his office. James stood in front of the door, blocking her way. “The Board is in the middle of a meeting! This isn’t the best time!” “On the contrary! If the Board is present, this is the best time!” It was the first time she looked at him squarely. Her face toward his, he melted, at a loss for words. She reached behind him and thrust open the door. Presenting herself to a smokey room filled with men at a table. “Miss Hibbert! What a surprise!” There was no look of annoyance on Andre Banes face, but instead a mouthful of niceties. “Gentleman, you remember little Anne! All grown up of course!” The men looked on lugubriously as though she had interrupted something quite serious. “Anne we are sorry for your loss…truly.” His tone imposing pity. Anne brushed aside the attempt of formalities, “James tells me that the Board will not “allow” me to sell my shares! Is this correct?” Mr. Bane looked at James disapprovingly. “Well, James should mind his words, shouldn’t he?” The phrase ran through Anne’s ears like a silent whistle. “Mind his words? Well now, don’t expect that from me!” “We would appreciate your agreement to hold your shares for a months time. Provisions must be made for the board to purchase the shares.” He waved his hands over his words as if a decree had been made. Still Anne pressed, “Mr. Bane, I don’t care if the board buys it or not! I don’t want to spend months minding preferences and unnecessary formalities! I want to be in my own apartment and done with this place by the end of the week! I have already received a generous offer!” “Oh…who?” He looked around the room to the other members. Anne stood her ground a moment longer, “I don’t see that it matters, so long as conservancy and botanical preservation are paramount…” Still the silence lingered on, with a discomfort so thick that even Anne felt pressed to speak into it. “Hugh Balcree. From the San Francisco Chapter.” The room shifted. Mr. Watkins poured another drink and Bane exchanged a glance with Mr. Carlyle. James looked down, hiding his eyes from Anne’s keen stare.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

The Tragedy of James and Jackie: Making monsters of Men...

A prostitute named Jackie has a savings box of money. She vows to one day leave, or die trying. Mr. Bane brings James to the whore house in order to make a man out of him. He books James a room with Jackie, who is Banes favorite whore. James’ failure to perform is evident. But Jackie knows just the remedy... He comes back again. And again And again Until soon, they are lovers, wonderful lovers. James comes each week, sometimes twice. He helps her plan her savings; teaches her about investments and returns. They lie next to each other and do math problems. Jackie talks about all the things she will do when has enough to leave. James confides in her about his frailties and failures. On the contrary, Jackie sees a wonderful man. Her heart is full of hope for a fresh future, his because with her, he can fly. But he runs out of money. The grips of the depression are tightening. They try to meet in in the park, as if it were a date. But someone recognizes them both. James is shamed for being with that kind of woman in public. He denies he knows her and walks away. The next day, he comes to her in the brothel and apologizes, He insists, “This is the only safe place to meet”. Jackie has another way; she sneaks into his boarding house that night and they make love. But when she comes back to the whore house, she is badly beaten for coming home wet with empty pockets! Time passes and her bruises fade. She misses James dearly. She comes up with a plan. She invests the way James taught her. Every week, she buys a bucket of flowers from Anne. She sells them on the streets to make money each week. She wants to earn money respectably. Jackie tells James to come on Fridays. She tells him that for an hour on Fridays she can have a visitor and that she chooses him. But the truth is, she is paying the mistress herself. She is paying the mistress each week so that she can see James. But James begins to stand her up. His work for Mr. Bane is becoming dark and we fear for what he is becoming. Jackie has to pay the mistress whether James comes or not. One day Mr. Bane comes in to the Brothel looking seeking Jackies services. He has always been a rough lover, but today she stands up to him. She pushes him off and tells him no! She bites him! The mistress comes in and rebuffs Jackie. Offers for Mr. Bane to have another woman. He wants Jackie all the more now, but his enthusiasms have been dashed. As he leaves with Jackies Bite mark on his face the mistress apologizes and promises a few rows on the house for all the trouble. Bane tells James about what happened to his face. “That whore bitch Jackie did it!” James goes sheet white and goes to Jackie. Jackie tells James everything. How she couldn’t stand to be without him. They way she wants to love him and help him. The way she sold flowers to see him, because he was her investment, and she was his return. He laughs because “That’s not how it works…” but she protests and hold his face and says, “Yes it does,my love, that’s exactly how it works!” They vow to leave together Friday night. Come Friday, the Mistress tells Jackie she is to entertain Mr. Bane. But she leaves to catch the train with James. Bane is livid and goes looking for her. James has not arrived at the station, but Bane does. His obsession with a debt being paid and his seething hateful fire for Jackie is unleashed. He pushes her into an alleyway and rapes her. She starts to fight back, and he bites her face the way she bit his. She does something excruciatingly painful to him. The train light shines on the track about to arrive at the station. He throws her on the track as it arrives…killing her. James arrives at the crime scene. He sees the bite mark on Jackies face…just like the one on Mr. Banes face days ago. Remembering Banes words “The debt must be paid”. James knows the truth and says nothing. The police report her as a suicide. “Another worthless whore”. Jackies money box lay open, blood-streaked dollar bills flap nearby from underneath a railroad tie.

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Naomh- Chapter 11

“Love never fails” Read the inscription of the gold wedding ring that Sylvia Breslyn removed from her finger. She placed it on the windowsill above her kitchen sink before plunging her hands in to wash a pair of man’s trousers in the warm basin below. The pants had earned a good wash. As Sylvia frothed the soap through to work up a good scrub the grime oozed its way through the white lather turning it brown. It would take a few rounds, top to tail to come clean. Sylvia enjoyed making things come clean helping things become what they ought to be. The simple task of setting one thing right in the world, even a pair of pants set her at ease.
The trousers were one of two pair owned by Sylvias husband Neil who at present lie sleeping on the living room couch and at present washed dishes at a cafĂ© in the Harbor and on any given day was another man entirely depending on the weather and his pocketbook and the stiffness of the drink. A baby’s cry rang from the other room breaking the silence of the afternoon. Baby Trudy. Sylvia’s hands were still wet and soapy, she looked into the living room. Neil was unroused by the baby’s cry, or at least he pretended to be so. She squeezed the pants through again and brown streaks continued to bleed into the water below. “Not finished”, she thought. She paused before calling to Neil to go to Trudy. He had come home late again last night. Drinking. She had heard him heaving in the bushes at 2am. Now, he lay in what looked like an uncomfortable position, his legs off the sofa and his arms catawampus to fit the small couch. He was still greasy from the day before. She looked at him and could only imagine his smell. Sweat and vomit and food odors of many kinds. And his breath… It was better he didn’t get the baby. She looked down the half washed trousers. They would have to wait. She dried her hands on a dishtowel nearby and looked at her ring on the windowsill, “Love never fails” She laughed to herself and slipped the costume back on her finger, exiting to gather baby Trudy for another morning nurse

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Calla-Chapter 10

“Where to Miss?” The cabby looked in the rearview. ---
Anne sat in the back seat with her hands wrapped tightly around the handle of her umbrella. Where could she go? The last train back to San Francisco had left. Besides it would be callous of her to leave at a time like this. She was stuck in Seattle. Damn him! --- --- “Miss, I need to know where were headed.” Anne hesitated. “Capitol Hill, The Conservatory.” The words rolled off her tongue and she hated that they did. She could almost see him smirking the way he did. Even now she couldn’t escape his supremacy. --- The Great John Hibbert! A sudden desire to snap her umbrella half rose inside her. What kind of a person was she? --- He had raised her to follow in his footsteps at the time of his passing, and now that time had come. He had lured her back by her own sympathies, baited her with her own inheritance to carry on his legacy. Put her name to paper even and low, he had passed in the night before she could even contemplate her own word. And now legalities would hold her to it! --- She was stuck. Bequeathed to a life she loathed. The one she had fought to get out from underneath by her life of independence. Hadn’t it been bad enough being dragged around the world her life through being filled with the pomp and rhetoric of his scientific community? Being raised as a horticultural savant; shown off at parties to recite Latin to adults carrying on in conversations far beyond her years! She had found herself a social cripple by her peers knowing nothing the small talk of fashion and music! Too passionate and serious with an exacting nature, lacking the same abandon of youth that most people around her felt. She often left parties humiliated, having said too much. --- He had made her this awful way and now left her behind in it. --- She wanted nothing of the life left behind. His life. The one that made her strange and isolated and lonely. --- At least with him alive she had someone to be angry with, someone to blame. Now it was just her alone in her rage and loneliness. She wanted to die with him or wished she had died before him so that he could feel this weight and not she! Damn him! God Damn Him to Hell! ------- Suddenly the cab stopped. The Conservatory. “Fifty-five cents, ma’am. You want someone to walk you in?” She dared not answer. Her rage crippled mind was betraying her countenance and she hid her crooked face from the driver as she handed him a dollar. She ran from the cab as he called after her. “You alright Miss?” --- She thrust her hand into her purse and pulled out a key and unlocked the door to the Conservatories main entrance, slamming it shut behind her. Turning toward the exotic displays, an awful animal utterance escaped from her mouth from her gut. It was an ugly sound somewhere between crying and yelling. Sadness and anger. “YOOOOOOUUUUU!” She shouted as hard as she could against the interior walls of the glass house until the last bit of breath expelled from her lungs, and she pushed the more until nothing was left but a helpless spittle of a groan. ------ Silence. ------ And there he was. All around her. ------- She could see him in the Sego palms and Dendrobiums that covered the walls of the room. Smelled him in the Narcissus papyraceus of the autumn display. She could hear him in the pond as it splattered against the rocks and shook the fronds of the Blechnum spicant waving at her like a tease. And she could feel him in the towering Livistona chinensis, far above her shoulders looking down at her from on high. -- And finally, the tears came. Not mild and sad, but hapless and ugly. An old familiar sadness that told her that she was alone and strange and impossible to please. And she found herself missing him in the most surprising way. She missed the anger that she felt for him. The anger that helped keep the sadness at bay. The blame that made the loneliness stop. He had raised her, and she hated him for it. --- In life she could not escape his vain grandiosity and now, in death it would be no different. She was tied to his intentions, whether she liked it or not.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Chapter 8- Father and Son

---As Parochial Vicar of St Josephs Catholic Church and nearing 80 years of age Father Pat seldom heard what he considered a good confession anymore. ---During the Spanish American war Father Pat had heard some of the most heart wrenching last words of dying soldiers on both sides. He had been Chaplin for the American army, but the Spanish opposition happened to be fervently Catholic, and he often heard “Padre…Por favor…” or “Father…please…” beckoning him close to hear the dying words of a blood-soaked soldier in his last moments on the battlefield. --- Father Pat heard all the things a man hid from the world until death came to find him. He heard about infidelity, and abuse both given and received. Stories about theft and lies and the willful schemes of men. Lament over rapes and murders. He would have been downcast at the tales had he not remembered that it was redemption they sought. It was their repentance and their hope of heaven that drove them to cry his name, “Padre…Father…” Boys all of them. --- He gave last rights to both sides; his faith knew not the boarders of war. All were Gods children and he doled out absolution to all who asked for it. Repentance reflected the sacred rhythm of life, the great cycle of pride and humility, the refining of a soul that drew him to the priesthood. Father Pat loved a good confession, he seldom heard one, but he always prayed. ---The bell of St. Josephs Catholic Church in Seattle rang Twelve noon, Monday. Normally Reconciliation wasn’t heard until Wednesday. It gave people proper time to sully their pure hearts after Sunday’s offering. ---Joseph Lavery was the only one there that afternoon, he had requested it. He had called Father Sunday night and wanted to meet right then but Father Pat had said he served four Masses that day and had a headache. But truth be told he had already eaten a steak dinner at Callahan’s and seen his way through the better part of a bottle of red wine a nice family had given him last Christmas. He was listening to a ballgame on the radio when Joseph called. ---It would have to wait till Monday. ---By noon, Joseph had already been there an hour to pray a rosary. Typically, his confessions were quite drab; impure thoughts, half-truths, and late bills; that sort of thing. But today did not disappoint, Father Pat loved hearing about the family arguments. Their squabbles were his entertainment. It reminded him of his upbringing with three brother of his own. Josephs tale did not dissapoint, he had never actually struck Daniel. Father Pat was swept away and for a few blessed moments, forgot himself. ---From between the veil between Father Pat jumped to his feet during Josephs confession and swung his fist like he was watching a boxing match and cried out, “Heeyo! Right in the jabber!” It certainly wasn't like Joseph to strike someone, let alone his brother and Father Pat couldn't help but be swept away. ---Joseph exhaled in frustration from behind the veil. “He didn’t deserve it…well he did. But I know how he struggles in his faith, and I don’t think I brought him any closer to Christ with what I did.” ---“Admonish the sinner I say, Joe! Besides your brothers been a dirty no gooder at times…can’t say I blame you.” Father Pat sensed there was more. He could smell the reluctance on Joseph, he was holding back, he always held back. That was the thing about people who confessed their scruples like Joe. They confessed everything and nothing. Father knew there was more, just how much was a mystery. Still, he invited, “Is there anything else?” ---Joseph hesitated and thought about Daniels commitment to the Gatt Brothers and what trouble they were in. But he couldn’t say any of that to Father Pat. He had never confessed to Father about selling booze, first because he didn’t think it was wrong and second because he wanted to protect Father Pat. It was one thing to confess a sin to a Priest if you had an intention of changing but what Joseph was doing was considered crime and he did not want to make Father Pat an accessory. ---Father Pat sat in the silence and let the spirit move. ---Joseph remembered what Daniel had said about family and the rage that it ignited inside him. A lump rose in hi his throat. He rolled his neck to stretch it out, breathed hard and swallowed it back. “That’s all today, Father.” Joseph sat stoically, holding himself back from saying more. ---Father Pat raised his eyebrows. He enjoyed Josephs confession today, but it was not the one he had hoped for. “Well, you’ve got to make things right with him. Tell him you’re sorry. Move on with it. Brothers shouldn’t quarrel.” Father leaned into the screen between them. ---It wasn’t that simple Joseph leaned into Fathers niceties, “He’s deciding things for the business without me!” ---Father Pat leaned back, “Is he deciding without you or are you deciding without him?” ---“I’m ten years older! I’m in charge of more! I know better!” Joseph’s protest sounded petty the closer he got to losing control. ---Father Pat continued, “Who are you to take away your brother’s freedom Joseph?” ---Joseph, almost insolent now, “Father you don’t even know…” ---“But it sounds like you do! You know better than Daniel you know better than me. Joseph, some men insist to learn by consequence. Who are you to take that from him?” ---“But what if it leads him too far down the wrong path? What if he hurts others?” Joseph wore the anguished face of a prophet. ---Father Pat reminded, “Then the lord will be here for him to make a right turning.” And with that the penance was given. “Three hail Mary’s and an our Father…but both of us know you’ll say the whole Rosary.” ---There was a stillness between the two of them. ---Father Pat made the sign of the cross over Joseph as he left to do his penance. Father Pat stayed behind alone in the confessional. He gave thanks for the confession that Joseph gave and prayed that what ever he was holding back would be brouht to light in Gods prescious time. ---

Rainer Men's club (A)

It seemed the afternoon meeting at the Conservatory had moved to the Rainer House, a men’s club in downtown Seattle. Formalities of the...