with an August 9, 2005, author's note
I had an Indian mother and a WASP father. Both were born and raised in Britain; they married there in '75, emigrated to America the next day and had me, their only kid, a year later. Both their families had disowned them for marrying someone of an inferior race. Thus, my parents never talked about their kin, at least in front of me, nor have I ever met my kin. In addition, a fire started by a faulty space heater destroyed my childhood home one night in '94, killing both my parents and incinerating any info there about my relatives, if it had even existed. Even the Internet has proven no help info-wise. I couldn't tell my distraught friends the truth, that I couldn't do all I could because I didn't know who and where my Indian relatives were.
A little after eight, Shawn Farrell called. He was editor-in-chief at Nova Comics and tossed me freelance work. "Bummer of a day, huh, Dot?" (His nickname for me: Dot, as in Dothead.)
"Yeah, Fairy. Like, totally, dude." (My nickname for him: Fairy, as in Farrell.)
"You finish inking that story?"
"Every gory inch of it. A real Pulitzer candidate."
"Great. Can you meet me at M. Hattans around nine? You can give me the story there. Plus you probably need to relax, and I have something important to tell you."
Uh-oh, a face-to-face meeting. Didn't sound good.
"Sounds good," I answered.
I arrived at M.Hattans nine sharp, carrrying the story in a used FedEx envelope under my arm. I'd used leaky Rapidograph pens to ink the minimalist pencil drawings some Nova drone had rendered onto twenty 15-by-17-inch sheets of Bristol board--acid-free Bristol board, the type that lasts forever, as if future generations will find Mr. Force's decapitations and dismemberments historically significant. I sat at one of the leopard-spotted red tables and eyeballed the surroundings, the puce wallpaper and pink pleather couches and white neon wall scribbles that buzzed for some reason. Most of my tr�s-cool friends denigrated this upper Manhattan hangout as a meat-market for artsy-pretentious yuppies who found reality threatening; indeed, the large flat digital TV screen hanging in the back aired its usual time-lapse-blooming-flower loops instead of news coverage about Armageddon's arrival. I understood my friends' views but secretly liked this club, liked moving-and-shaking vicariously.
Shawn arrived at 9:40, neither apologizing for nor explaining his lateness. I greeted him jovially; while waiting for him, I'd had two cherry-flavored vodka tonics in what looked like large glass beakers on tiny pedestals. Best twelve bucks I'd spent that week. He sat down, and I handed him my package. "Awfully stiff for toilet paper," he smirked. He was maybe in his early thirties but looked and acted like a cynical middle-aged comics hack trying to joke his way through another pointless day. Shawn had thin, greasy yellow hair; a puffy face covered with small creases; and a puffy physique that appeared caught in mid-morph. He somehow got into this high-class establishment wearing a faded Vanilla Ice T-shirt, a gray blazer with gigantic lapels, baggy green slacks, and disintegrating black Topsiders. He dressed worse at work.
"You're probably wondering why I called you here," he said.
"Oh, you talking to me?"
"Nova Comics plans to release a benefit book helping the victims of today's nuke-o-rama. My idea."
"Christ, you work fast. The corpses haven't even finished glowing yet."
"I'd like you to edit it, for obvious reasons. You could even put one of your own stories in it."
"My stories don't suck anymore?"
"Let's just say they'd fit well into this project. This project can't miss. The company could use the publicity, and so could I. Everyone loves multicultural crap."
"Saint Shawn. Hmph. Who'd get the proceeds from this book?"
"The Red Cross, NAMBLA--how the hell should I know, Drake? You figure it out. It is a benefit book, so we can't pay you much, if anything. But at least you'd get some publicity, maybe parlay your fame upward to become cartoon editor at some porno mag."
A pause.
"Brute Force holding a dead Pakistani boy and crying," I said, looking down at my empty beaker glasses. "Starvixen crying in the shower."
I could hear a symphony of buzzing neon.
Author's note, 8/9/05:
Another unfinished story. I wrote this one in 2002, during a major crisis between India and Pakistan that threatened to escalate into nuclear war. The crisis involved, as well as I can remember (after bouncing around the Internet for a minute or two looking for details), nuclear weapons testing, which country would control Kashmir, and possibly which season of Magnum, P.I. kicked the most ass. (Yeah, Dave, we get it. War is silly....You un-American weirdo.)
I thought Drake would be the narrator's first name, but what boy with that name grows up to draw comics? Anyone named Drake would become the CEO of a European investment company, or a senior member of the Trilateral Commission, or an aggressively depilated gay porn star.
The story's final line is a little lame.
La la la la...Fiction, Home.
� 2002-2005 David V. Matthews