Hubris showed me he was boss today.  I had hubris yesterday, and this morning the world set me straight.  I should have known better, of course, than to be proud the night before a dentist appointment with G.  It was the sort of dentist appointment most people like — no cavities, simple cleaning, an x-ray or two.  G., though, doesn’t appreciate that.  The staff passed a bottle of vodka around after we left. 

And I scheduled surgery for my neck and back and left leg, which were all sacrificed in awkward positions for one hour so I could hold G.’s hand and pat her head.   It’s raining outside, you might have guessed that.  I’ve got no hopes for anything to be better I’ll just try again tomorrow. 

Because I’ve got some data now where it should be and am somewhat back in the game, here’s this.  Something should be cut, feel free to suggest.

CLAIRE Byrne (formerly Jenks) was Howard’s only sibling. She was an enigma and she fixed onto Ellen immediately almost as if she’d been assigned.

Claire saw in Ellen the elaborately marked but fragile scales of lepideptora, and from the beginning she worried. Ellen saw in Claire her MacGuffen – Hitchcock’s famous prop device, the thing in the story that’s unessential but doesn’t seem to be and moves everything along nonetheless.

“Howard will only ever be happy,” Claire announced to Ellen over pasta pomodoro on their very first lunch. “He’s not self-aware, he won’t indulge you with conflict, he’s conflict-averse. You’ll have to give all that up.”

“Okay.  So I’ll give up conflict.”

Claire cracked a small indulgent smile.  “Really?  You’ll have to be simple.” 

Ellen considered Claire’s curious disclosure with wrinkled brows as she watched her mop up a pool of olive oil with their rosemary sourdough bread. 

Claire was Ellen and Howard’s third person; all successful mergers need one.  Father Keegan had implied as much when he married them.  Facing a mottled collection of family and friends just after he’d joined them as one he said, “Each of you is in your own way responsible for this.”  Or something to that effect.  Of course, the second he let them out there was a mad dash to the bar and most of what had happened inside was forgotten.

It’s a lot to ask of a packed and sweaty church, but there should be at least one other on the hook.  It’s that much easier with three, one can be in charge of the patch kit.  The third might be a therapist, a lover, or a close friend from way back, maybe Phil.  It should be someone who knows both parties, someone who can take either side in a pinch, someone who knew these people when they were young or at least younger.  Someone who can vouch, when they start to crash, that they have more promise than this.  Someone who had seen Howard and Ellen, for instance, when he still looked at her that certain way, and when she still clung to each of his words.  Someone who would know that beneath time’s tarnish there was something to salvage and would say so.  Someone to tell all their stories; Ellen and Howard required narration. 

Ellen first spoke to Claire on the phone the night Howard proposed.  “Congratulations,” Claire had said, because that’s what you say.  Then she was all business – “You’ll have to get married in May because I’m going away after that, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Claire was a slight surreptitious woman who reeked of intrigue.  Ellen had heard others – Howard’s family, mostly — refer to her in various terms, all vague and uncertain.   She was a correspondent, or a spy, or involved with a special service.  She’d been a Liaison to the Chief or Minister or Prince or the Sultan of Malawi, or maybe Tibet.  She was a stringer, a fixer, a Mideast bureau chief, an ambassador to Gamay, a person of interest.  She had jumped out of cargo planes and manned the helicopter of an Arabian King.  She’d been a waitress in Dubai and starred in more than one salacious roman a clef.  She slipped in and out of war zones the way certain drivers – you know the type — change lanes.  Whenever Ellen asked Howard, or Howard’s mother, anything about Claire, they both answered with a headshake and wave of the hand and that was that.  She was wed briefly to a prince from a small country, no one could seem to remember which one, who was killed in a tragic art accident; a Giacometti fell on his head.  He left Claire a title and bags of wadded-up money in outmoded currencies.

Claire’s New York apartment was cluttered with dusty gold trophies — Emmys and Edgars, and awards for courage and bravery and humanitarian acts named for presidents.  An Oscar, even, but she’d flipped her hand dismissively when Ellen, visiting once, had asked –“Oh, that’s Peter O’Toole’s”. 

Claire routinely and nonchalantly took calls in front of Ellen from foreign embassies.  She had a leather satchel of phone numbers where you could find, should you need them, home numbers for Madonna, the Dalai Lama, and the two living Beatles.  She had King Hussein’s name crossed out four times.  “He loses his phone a lot,” she explained.   Claire kept a flat in Baden Baden, she knew the good maitre’d in Katmandu, she bought her t-shirts at The Gap in Beirut because she swore they were softer.  Claire had smoked pot once with Castro; though Ellen had only read about that.  Claire, herself, had never confirmed. 

Once when Ellen was in New York for a conference, Claire took her to lunch.  They went to a greek restaurant near Claire’s apartment, it was small, and Salman Rushdie joined them as the waitress came with the specials.  It made Ellen so nervous she ordered the goat. 

Claire was free, she came and went, she dropped in unexpectedly and left without warning.  She once flew Ellen to Arkansas on a Thursday to eat monte cristos with a President.  Claire was unpredictable like that.  I am telling you this because she’s an important piece of the story, this union of the Jenks.   Butch and Sundance had Etta, Chrissie and Janet had Jack, and Woody and Mia (somewhat unconventionally) had Soon-Yi.  Howard and Ellen then – well, mostly Ellen – had Claire. 

“Claire thinks we should get married in May,” Ellen told Howard. 

“Claire thinks a lot of things,” Howard replied. 

C. mocked my fly until I sent her this picture. 

Hmm.  Well, it came out better when I sent it to her.  Anyway, I think she’s come around.  This is what flew onto my shirt. 

I do not make this up, people, none of it.  Every single thing you read on this page, on these pages, in these horrifying little terror-filled posts, it all happens.  It is all TRUE. 

And here is what just happened right now and I thought I would tell you before I drive to the hospital and ask the doctor to reattach the frayed endings of my permanently shattered nerves and extract what little threads he might find remaining of my poor fractured sanity.

A HUGE BIG FAT UGLY CREEPY SCARY HORRIBLY ICKY CRANE FLY …

SWOOPED DOWN AT ME  … and …

FLEW ON MY SHIRT!!!!!

And now I can’t get my font size to go back down! 

Oh there, I just did.  Whatever.

[To contribute to the future debilitating mental medical needs of teresa difalco, please click here.]

.. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.  Ha ha.

A.’s back, kiddies.  Well, not back back, but in the state.  I still had to make the coffee this morning, but maybe not tomorrow.  I’m cutting words like mad, I may end up with a short story after all this.  About crane flies. 

I see the Fed is pumping money into the system, I want money in my system.  Could you look into a money pump, A., and get some billions pumped into our system.  

I’ve got so little to say.  Yes, I plagiarized C.’s email yesterday, it’s out, the jig’s up.  What little reputation I had is now soiled.  So is this shirt I just spilled coffee on.    You knew it anyway, I have little political passion of my own.  I can only summon it in short spurts, 1.7 seconds once.

It’s the fall, almost, and as soon as it rains I’m having dinner parties, I mean it.  Want to come?  And a film club.  But A., you need to finish the back room in the other tiny house.  I saw you put up a wall, I know what you can do now, you’re on the hook.  You have to work with no shirt on, too, and call me “ma’am.”

See?  Seriously, I have nothing.  I’ll never be a Press Secretary at this rate.  I hate writing books, they’re too hard, I’ll give you $23 to write mine.  I had blueberries at breakfast, I thought they’d help.  I want to buy Eli Halpin’s giraffe, I think that might help, too, but it’s $950 and A. lost at poker. 

I’ll write again when I can think of a poem.  Or if you have a poem send it here and I’ll make you almost famous, but not quite. 

So A.’s in New York which means not only did I have to make the coffee this morning, I also had to wheel the garbage out to the curb.  He is soooo lucky it’s not recycling day. 

He’s at H.’s, or just leaving there, and making his way to C.’s, they’re going to walk Magee.  I’m bitterly jealous about all of it so I’m not throwing kidneys or livers or sheep at any of them today, not one.   

Here’s what I have to do before 3:00:  Finish my book; find and murder the two giant crane flies I saw last night — hopefully they’ve mated already and dropped dead; finish 12 book reviews; change my Status on Facebook 5 times; get lunch.

You could make it so much easier if you’d bring me broccoli soup from The Sage.  I tell you that all the time I don’t know why you don’t do it.  Also if you come clean my house I’ll give you $5 for that, right up front.

In My Book (unrelated) there are alcoholic and agoraphobic and musical and isolational and insectal themes, none explored to their full potential, and so that’s what I’m finishing up.   Some of your names are in there.  Isn’t that funny?  In the very first scene, in fact, there’s a party being planned and you might remember I’m bad with character names.  I don’t like getting slowed by them so everyone is either “Jane” or, if I just saw you at drop-off, let’s say, or Starbucks or you just emailed me and then I go back to work, well then I’ve got you on the brain so I use you.   You’re the character.  Isn’t it great? 

Don’t worry, it’s all made up.  I don’t really think you have an unhealthy physical relationship with your goat, and that part might get cut anyway. 

I wish I were meeting C. and A. for lunch.  Next time.

I know you’re busy, relax, you don’t have to read this.  You’ve all got jobs, and lives and lovers, I know I know.  Don’t worry, I mean it, just skip over this, it’s really no big deal.

Sigh.

But if you are reading, if you’re there — and please don’t feel that you should be, no strings with us, seriously — but if you are, well … I not only drank the entire glass of iced tea –and it was a tall glass trust me — I refilled it.  Yeah.  And then drank all of that.  Yup.  Yep, yep.  Hmmmmmmm.  Yeah.

Oh, and then I had gazpacho.  Crazy, huh?  I wasn’t hungry, even, but I thought gazpacho would, I don’t know, shake things up a little, get us moooo-ving again.  Inspire me.  Why not, it’s a pretty name.  Plus all those veggies, I thought it might make my brain bulge out like Popeye’s arms.  It didn’t, though.  Not that I can tell anyway.

So, yeah.  Well?  I’m just sitting here doing my work.  Yep.  Not in the same place, though, I moved.  I didn’t want to move but Scruffy jumped up to where I was sitting while I got the gazpacho and I didn’t want to disturb him when I came back.  Now I’m sitting slightly to the left of where I was sitting. 

True story, every last bit. 

I just now set the gazpacho bowl down on a table near where I’m sitting (to the right of Scruffy).  I’m done with it, I ate it.  I suppose I should put it away.  It wouldn’t hurt to.  I might.  We’ll see.  Just go back to work, I didn’t mean to bother you, really.  I have that picture, you know, of the crane fly, I can still try to get that.  I will.  And then I’ll put the bowl away.  Hey, yeah, or maybe I’ll swim, it’s nice out.  Anyway, I gotta go now, I’ll call you later. 

Awhile back, you may recall, I left the orange juice out all night.  I wanted to drink some in the morning, but it was warm, and I worried that night germs had snuck in.  I struggled, for a time, over what to do.  I think in the end I threw it out.  (I don’t trust what goes on here with the lights off.)

Fast forward to last night:  Yes, I did the exact same thing.  Only this time it was iced tea but I still have the same dillemma — I want some, but will it kill me?

Sigh.  I could make more, I guess.  But, you see, I used the perfect combination of tea bags — two mints, three of the white ones (I forget what they are), three purple ones, and I don’t have that combination again.  I’d have to go to the store, and I can’t go to the store, I’m working.  Still, to work I need a cool drink, so you understand, then, what I’m up against.

I’m going to drink it.  In my heart I know that’s what I’ll do, I should have skipped this whole pointless struggle.

T., in the meantime, could bring more wine while I work through it.  So could his wife.  I’m just saying.

C. and I are Kindling each other.  We’re sending manuscripts back and forth, because if you read them on the Kindle — I think I already told you this — you don’t have to work on them anymore, they look all done.  They look great and done and no one has to work and even middles that are lousy look fine. 

I’ve added another whole layer to the crane fly in my book, I know you’ve been curious.  I have L. to thank for it.  I’ve developed its character, Ellen feels empathy toward it now.  Yes, there’s still a violent and brutal slaying on p. 174, but she’s no animal, Ellen.  She learns from her actions and she evolves.  She wakes up to the plight and struggle of the clumsy fly, she sees it as tragically misrepresented, she begins to think it’s a kangaroo.  This is around the time, though, she starts taking her corn flakes with gin.  As far as details go, that’s important.

“Their relationship had been a diversion.  Reed was ice cream, not a meal.”

That’s a line from my book.  It has nothing to do with the fly.  A. got a great picture of a crane fly, it’s on my phone.  If I can figure out how to get it from there to here I’ll show you before you go home.

Update:  Here it is.

No one sent me a poem, so here goes.  I called it “Blue Birds”, on purpose.  Two separate words.  Because the birds are either Jays or just Birds, bird people always correct me, but no one can tell me they’re not Blue. 

BLUE BIRDS

The fat birds belly up to the dog dish,
And squawk twice before they take food.
I suppose it’s to say they don’t fear me,
or the crane flies dropping post-coital eggs on the lawn.
Scruffy sleeps through all of it,
but if no one sneaks up to the gate,
He barks all day.