2445 words today

Live-blogging tonight, some time around 7 PM PST.

I can’t write for shit during the week, but at least I can write on the weekends. Below the cut you’ll find a snippet. To recap: Lisa’s had a crappy day. Her boyfriend (Henry) dumped her, then told nasty lies about her to all the other high school kids. She’s probably going to get suspended for beating up the two boys who repeated those things, and on top of all that, she suspects her mama’s using drugs again. There’s an excellent chance Child Protective Services will invade their lives (again), and so she and her little brothers Billy Ray and Cyrus will be placed in different foster homes.

She runs away from school and into the arms of Brad Pitt, who claims to be Brad Pitt’s body double. Brad promises her a way out: she and her brothers can join their movie production company.

Lisa’s cool with that (although suspicious). She wants to check out the movie set, but first, she has Brad drive her home so that she can pack some things.

Here we go . . .

She had him park right in Henry Davies’s muddy skid marks. From here, they could scarcely see Miss Serafina’s mansion, hidden as it was by a stand of blue cedar. But that’s the kind of neighborhood this was, Lisa thought, and she told Brad as much. A real American melting pot, with mansions next to double-wides, black folk next to white, brown folk next to yellow, all the rainbow colors living in harmony, except when the rich folk like Mr. Eccles took objection to Bud Campbell putting his rusted-out Dodge pickup on blocks in his front yard, or when Mrs. Chang the Dollar & Dime Store magnate got heated when Maria Quintanilla’s pit bull Trevor raped Schlafly, her little Shih Tzu.

“But you can’t have harmony without some strife,” she said, feeling very adult about this observation. Brad followed her as she left the car, opened the double-wide, and set the baby down in his bouncy chair. Billy Ray griped some, then attacked his Binky with renewed force. He was such a good baby, hardly cried at all. You wouldn’t even know he was hungry except for the way he abused his pacifier. She would need to change him soon, but from experience she knew she should feed him first, let him poop, and then change him. She took a bottle from the fridge, put it in a mixing bowl in the sink, and let the hot water run to warm it up. Then she went searching for luggage. She found a Tar Heel overnight bag in Mama’s bedroom closet, but she figured she would need at least another one this size for all of her stuff and the baby’s gear, too. And what would Cyrus do? Well, Cyrus could damn well figure that one out for himself.

“It’s a funny world, isn’t it, Brad?” She liked saying his name, especially since he had stopped correcting her about his identity. Good thing, too, since the lies had started to grate on her. “You got four people living in this little place, and Mama and I are both pretty big, as you’ve no doubt noticed. Me especially, I mean. I’m not a small woman.”

When she said this, she was transferring Mama’s good Victoria Secret underwear into the Tar Heel bag. Mama didn’t seem to care much what she wore these days, so she wouldn’t miss a few panties. Lisa watched Brad carefully, and even shook out a pair of red silk undies so he could see how big they were in the rear, but all he did was shrug at her comments. The man could be maddening. Would it be so difficult for him to say, “Oh, you aren’t so big?”

“While right next door you have Miss Serafina living in that big old empty place, probably four thousand square feet, and not even any servants to fill it. If I were a rich ol’ famous black woman living in the South, you can bet I’d fill my house with white servants. And they’d have to do what I say, wipe my butt if I asked them to, not that I would, because I would be kind and generous and they’d all love me and tell folks what a wonderful human being I am. And everyone would want to be my employee. Is that so crazy?”

That’s how I write science fiction.

D.

Walnut, February 9, 2008. Category: Writer's Life.

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