Hope Idiotic | Part 27
It was hard explaining to Lexi why he hated going to Indiana so much. To her, Indiana was where her heart was. But she had a lovely family; one that got along and didn’t live in filth or rely on a broke, recovering alcoholic to support it. Chuck and Lexi were from the exact same place—grew up just two blocks away from one another—but they were from completely different worlds. She would never see Cayuga from his point of view, and he would never see it from hers, even if he wanted to.
Hope Idiotic | Part 26
Chuck’s mother was sick again. A massive heart attack. She was in the I.C.U. for three days. Chuck arrived three days later. Neither his father, nor his brother thought to call him with the news that his mother was on the brink of death.
“She got home all right,” Darryl told Chuck over the phone.
“You people are unbelievable,” Chuck said. “I’m coming home.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 25
Lou shot straight up in bed. What did she just say? Am I drunk? Dreaming? Am I being punked? he thought. Lou could only recall one instance in their entire relationship—including their friendship before they dated—in which Michelle apologized outright like that. It was back in college, and it was for hardly anything worth apologizing. She got really drunk at a boyfriend’s frat house, fell in the pool, got into a fight with the boyfriend and called Lou for a rescue. They spent the night in his bed like a brother sharing space with his sister. The following morning she apologized with shame in her voice. This apology on the phone was something else entirely. And he needed to know more.
Muffled in German Luxury
It was noon and the streets were jammed with stylized fashionistas in hybrid SUVs driving their car-seated darlings who’d been born in our Taj Mahal Birthing Center to ballet, voice, or parent-toddler yoga.
Hope Idiotic | Part 24
When most people travel to Las Vegas, they spend a week drinking and gambling and trading venereal diseases with strangers. Maybe they take in a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Lou’s week in Vegas was spent interviewing for a job and repairing his house, which had been haphazardly battered and bruised by his best friend and tenant, a recovering alcoholic.
Hope Idiotic | Part 23
He burst through the apartment door like a savage. It was just past one in the morning, and Michelle was in bed asleep. He started to kick his shoes off, but he noticed that she hadn’t closed the closet doors. He hated it when she left the closet doors open during the night. He pulled the folding doors to close but something was on the sliding track preventing him from closing the closet. Lou thrashed and thrashed them again. When he realized what was blocking the doors—some of Michelle’s shoes that had been pulled out—he kicked at them and a heel or two slammed against the wall of the closet as the door path became clear. “Fucking shoes!” he shouted. “To hell!”
Hope Idiotic | Part 22
This was Lou’s cue. All he had to say was, ‘We’d love to’ and the waitress would say she’d be right back. She’d tell the owner/celebrity chef to get ready with the champagne. The manager would put his finger on the appropriate light switches. Lou would tell Michelle how much he loved her and how he wanted to start their life together right away. He’d get on his knee. The lights would change. All of the other patrons would become silent the moment they realized what was happening. He’d reach into the side pocket of his blazer and pull out the ring box. Michelle would start crying.
Hope Idiotic | Part 21
At that moment, Lou had $8,500 to his name. Give or take the few bucks from his unemployment checks that would be left after trying to pay his credit card bills. Looking at the statement, it felt good having all of that money staring back at him. He didn’t want to ever spend it. But it was already as good as gone.
Dark Flowers: An Excerpt
When Dahlia is informed she must learn to use her newly discovered powers, she isn’t sure if she should be elated or terrified. Having just murdered a few high school bullies, attending Sterling Manor could mean the start of a new life or the end of one.
Hope Idiotic | Part 20
Lou stared at her. That five hundred was the most money he’d made doing what he loved in a long, long time. Winning — just performing — was the best he’d felt in just as long. Michelle wasn’t letting him enjoy it. Was she really jealous of his win? And while he could have given her the full five hundred bucks to help pay for the trip, it wouldn’t have made much difference — not with what the whole thing cost anyway. Besides, he’d thought about treating himself to a new blazer and a pair of jeans since he hadn’t bought himself any new clothes in two years. He also thought he’d take Michelle out for a really nice evening, like the one where he would propose to her. This is bullshit, he thought as they engaged in a stare-down. He should have said something, but instead, he shrugged his shoulders in defeat and mumbled, “Fine.” Then he left to wander the ship’s decks drinking a glass of scotch until he had calmed down and figured Michelle had fallen asleep.
Hope Idiotic | Part 19
The day after Lou moved to Chicago, Michelle pointed to a Tiffany’s magazine ad. It was for a princess-cut diamond ring.
“This is the ring I want,” she told him. “This would be perfect.”
He held onto that magazine ad. And when he brought it to Goldman Jewelers, the longtime Bergman family jeweler in Skokie, Lou told the man, “If you can design this, it would be perfect.”
The jeweler, who was only a few years older than Lou, took a look at it. His name was Art Goldman. He was the fourth generation working in the business of making girls squeal with delight when they received their blood diamonds. Getting the Goldman Jewelers business card was a rite of passage. Pop gave it to him. It was yellowed and dog-eared.
Hope Idiotic | Part 18
What Chuck’s repo man would do then is go to the house and wait in the street for Chuck to return. The first time Chuck saw the tow truck as he turned onto the street, he hit the brakes, slammed it into reverse and hightailed it to Lexi’s. He returned at 5 a.m. and, thankfully, the truck was gone. He knew this would be the new norm, so he devised a plan. He would disconnect the garage-door sensors that caused the door to lift back up when an object was in the way. He would press the garage-door remote in his car as he neared the house. Once the door was lifted, he would press the remote again to close the door. Then he’d gun it and whip the car past the repo-man’s tow truck, up the driveway and into the garage with no time to spare and no margin for error. As long as he ignored the phone calls, the doorbell and the knocking on the windows and the front door, he’d be good to go. A closed garage door meant he was safe.
Hope Idiotic | Part 17
Lou realized that his joke wasn’t a joke at all. Not in a shrink’s office. “No, no. I’m sorry. I was being funny. Really, I’ve never thought about it. I mean, not any more than anyone else has ever thought about it. Just like, when you hear about someone doing it, you wonder about what the last thing to go through their mind was. And not the bullet, like if the person shot himself or anything. No. I’m not suicidal.”
Wild One
They entered the open-brick condo eager to rip each other’s clothes off. Maria rubbed the front of Eric’s kakis, while he slid his fingers up her red bubble skirt. He tore her white blouse and sucked from her shoulders down to her fingertips. Maria unbelted Eric’s pants and chucked the leather across the room.
Hope Idiotic | Part 16
Later that week, Lou started therapy. He’d gone to a psychologist before when he was in sixth grade. He was misbehaving in school, collecting an average of one detention a day from one teacher or another. He even managed to get a detention while in detention. His parents were convinced his behavioral problems stemmed from some sort of internal conflict. They had mistaken internal conflict as being a twelve-year-old class clown.
Hope Idiotic | Part 15
Chuck was going to write. He was going to edit the magazine. He was going to be productive. But he miscalculated the balance of booze and pills and his ability to work, so he instead ended up getting plowed, destroyed the motel room and slept on the beach with his head inside the empty beer case to protect his glasses.
The Throwing Muse
Here’s what’s wrong with Eric and Marie: Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old writer. He’s alright at it and lives off of it when it pays well, which is most of the time, and he’s made a comfortable space for he and Marie in their marriage in the world. But as of the past two months, and for no particular reason, Eric has the unfortunate luck to be experiencing what writers sometimes call a "block," which some claim does not really exist and others claim can be all but deadly. This is Eric’s problem.
Hope Idiotic | Part 14
CHUCK CLAIMED HE WAS ATTENDING AA MEETINGS ON A REGULAR BASIS. So each morning, Melvin stuck his nose right into Chuck’s open mouth and told him to breathe. These closed-door sessions were disguised as short, daily program meetings so as not to drum up any suspicion that something covert was going on. Not that anyone could have guessed that Chuck was allowing his superior to huff his morning breath.
Hope Idiotic | Part 13
She spent the majority of her day sitting at that wall unit writing summary judgments and answering the flurry of emails that poured in. Many of them were only one or two sentences — conversations that could have been easily had over the phone in less time and with less interruption to her train of thought. There’s nothing more distracting for a working writer than to have an email notification going off in the corner of the computer screen every other minute. When she needed a moment to think, she would lean back in her chair and look at the shelf just above her computer at the two framed photographs of her and Lou.
Hope Idiotic | Part 12
What kind of a boyfriend was he? What kind of a man lets his girlfriend of two years — a close friend for eight years before that — foot the bill for her big thirtieth birthday trip?
Life comes clearer on a hot, hazy summer day.
Sunburnt shoulders hunched from carrying the weight of the world
And the weight of your child and his laughter.