A Snowball's Chance...

Frozen blue snowball (oil pastel)

I'm still technically on hiaitus, but every time it snows so much in DC, I'm reminded of this story I wrote after snowmageddon happened, around 2009... A really lopsided snowball fight brings two taciturn DC neighbors together. Totally a shameless re-post!

Dear Mr. Tannenbaum,

Please consider the following before you file criminal charges, or whatever:

A few years ago, I also threw a snowball at Dr. Somiley.  Maybe you don't remember his family?  They were at the open house.  Dr. Somiley was a dentist.  Also, no one liked him either.  Not that I don't... dammit, I can't cross that out.  I hate handwriting things, which means I have no intention of re-writing this either.  But considering how late it is after being up all night, and that I want to get it through your mail slot before you leave the house, I hope you will understand.  Well, in any case, like a lot of the more terrifying dentists, Somiley had one of those names that matched his profession.  It should have been my first warning, I guess.

I don't know why I aimed the snowball at the old man's head.  I have a wife and kids.  I'm always telling them not to do it, because we can't afford it if someone gets it in their eye and we have to go the hospital.  It's also the reason why we have a rule not to put rocks inside of snowballs, because that possibly doubles the bill compared to a regular snowball to the face.  But it was right after that blizzard of 09.  I hadn't done any Christmas shopping and we were stuck under two feet of snow.  The last weekend before the holiday and I had to spend it shoveling out, that is, if anything was even open.  The boys were inside, going crazy, but I was the one who had to get waist deep in it and make sure the walk was shoveled, salted, safe and all that.  My wife would have helped but she was sick with the flu.  Then, that old Somiley parks, gets out of his Cadillac, hobbling up the stairs to his rowhouse somehow looking decently good.  To this day, I have no idea where he had been the previous night.  Top hat, cane and all.  I swear to goodness, he looked like a black Mr. Scrooge to me, cursing at the snow, scattering it with his cane, hating Christmas out loud when--however it was going--I'd worked my ass off this year and it was my one break before the big break.  All two extra days of it.  Did I also mention that I was once stuck on crutches for about half the year as a kid after I tore my ACL playing football?  Defensive tackle for the Carroll Lions.  It was the Tiny Tim inside of me, the kid who got cut and couldn't come back, then got fat in college.  It was the man with two kids, a wife who is so happy sometimes, I'm afraid to ever be negative... it was the English major in me who hard-packed that snowball, leaned back and aimed for Somiley, in the head.

Only, in this case I slowed a little before I let it fly.  In fact, I honestly threw under-handed so the poor guy could see it coming.  Okay, so my voice broke and I might have gone, "Oh, look out there, Old Somiley."

It must have been hard to see it coming out of the winter sky, snowball against the drifting cloud remnants of yesterday's snow storm.  I braced myself when he caught it.  Caught it in leather gloves.  Just like with you yesterday, right then, I thought Old Somiley was gonna kill me.  That cane was still hanging off of his arm.  He could chuck it real good if he wanted to.  He'd already caught a snowball I wasn't even ready for.

I said something like, "Meant to throw it at you, actually.  But then I thought it would be sort of mean.  So, you know, I went underhand."

But then, Mr. Tannenbaum, old Somiley did the one thing you failed to do for some reason yesterday.  That old man set down his hat and his cane, and he threw the snowball back.  Before I knew it, I was making a new one, and then he was stuck down on the sidewalk, pitching them up at me.  He couldn't get into his yard or up on his porch.  I was stuck just beyond mine, up in the yard.  Somiley had the advantage, because I never fixed my fence.  Somiley ducked like he was in a war, not even laughing too hard when I got him.  He was all under-handed, sent them soaring high up in the air.  Those snow-bombs could have been heat-seeking, I swear.  I was constantly looking up while I ran to make more.  I'd see these things hovering, really stopped and thinking at the arc of their trajectories, before they plummeted right down on my head.  Every time.  Every single time, these snowballs came right out of my line of sight.  I finally plunged into the snow, almost swam through it knit hat and all, to get close to the end of my yard, you know how it's stacked up off the street, like a fort wall?  Note, that is the reason why I had to leap over the fence, sort of.  Not because I was attacking you in a rage, like you started yelling.  I also thank you for not calling the police like you promised you would.  Remember that too, okay?

The other rowhouses across the street are sloped like the wrong side of a trench.  Behind enemy lines, that upper crust sunny side of the street, Northwest DC.  By the way, I thought you weren't like the rest of them.

At the edge of my yard (because our fence is brand new, now.  It didn't lean into your side, like you accused), I finally got Somiley good.  He was wheezing with laughter, crouched on the sidewalk directly beneath my perch, when I looked.  Then, I called him 'Smiley', he actually responded to it, and I let him have a mud-flavored ice ball, right where he could taste it.

We laughed so hard together, we forgot how cold we were.  He was pitiful, he really was.  I felt bad for him, I said, but he didn't feel bad for me at all.  He said that to my face. 

"Can I help you get up to your porch?"

"Yes, Tim, you can, in fact shovel my walk for me.  I earned more points than you did, that is how people tend to win games, isn't it?"

I got as far as his front steps in snow shoes when he gave me his house keys and explained where a second shovel was, by his front door.  Then, Dr. Somiley did the last three stairs in his Sunday coat and I did his porch and the first two.  Five stairs up to the porch just like my house.  Just like your house.  In case you forgot, though some might have the advantage of melting snow faster than others or growing greener lawns on the other side of the street, they're all the same, Mr. Tannenbaum.

He and I would say hello from time to time, after that.  I eventually caught my wife's flu--with everything else going on, I forgot to get my shot--and Somiley came by with tea, which I don't like to drink, and homemade pork chop soup, that I didn't have any freaking clue existed!  What I'm trying to say is, after the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2009, that creepy old dentist guy and I became better neighbors.  Whenever it snowed, every year, we'd come onto our porches, shovel at least as far as the yard and then re-start the battle.  Well, we’d try as early as the first snow, but there isn't always enough of it in DC.  So then we’d wait until there's at least an inch.  That's a normal, healthy snowfall here. 

Somiley beat me every year, except for, I think it was two years ago, when the kids got involved.  Charlotte screamed--I was already yelling too and she told us to stop before we broke any of our windows.  Snowballs are pretty great at getting through wire fences if they're hard packed and small enough, and even past iron bars over your front windows.  Not that I was hoping to aim for your front windows.  So, the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2010 ended in a draw.

The following year, he and I got up really early and shoveled our back porches together.  There’s perfect quiet in the back yards, here.  The alley was almost completely quiet.  And I never really liked my back yard.  Very primordial.  Mountain lions kill deer in the silence of the woods all the time--okay, so, not around here, but I hear it does happen.  But to go out and do that with a friend, and for there to be no more flare than the thrill of adrenaline, no snarky kids with snot-noses, just aiming into the silence, daring to see it land before ducking again for cover.  Cars pass through the alley and slow, peer up into our yards to tell if it really is an old black—err, African American man and his pudgy, winter-pasty, worse-for-wear neighbor.  No neighbor able to deny that both of us have the bravery of real athletes in that pristine moment, to have risen to the occasion.  Amazing.

Afterward, Somiley asked me about my two boys.  Daniel is a freshman in college now with the Facebook page I'm not allowed in and all at, but back then he was just a shrimp starting out with texting callouses on both thumbs.  I told him how Dannie drove me crazy, and Dr. Somiley gave a half-hearted snort, I think it was laughter.  He said his son Bo never grew out of it, but that the father's attitude has more to do with how the son comes out and not to get upset if I can't make Dannie work harder right now, or eat better, or back-sass less.

"Back-sass?  Bo?  Pork chop soup?  Did you say you were Southern, or did I always just assume as much from your accent?"

Somiley said, "No, Mr. Phelps.  You never did ask.  You appropriately minded your own business until now.  I was born in Georgia, came up here to live with my father and then got sent back to finish out with his mother and my grandmother, down South.  Satisfied?"

So, I assumed it wasn't a happy shuttling back and forth.  Somiley became aware of his tone and assured that Washington, DC was now his home and he'd raised his kids here and all, in our very neighborhood, in fact.  I didn't realize this because their son was about my age and living in another part of the District with his own family.  They never visited.

Last year, I did not see Somiley as much.  We weren't those kinds of neighbors to go over to one another's houses.  I had my family and my work, and he had an axe to grind that I sensed I could never ask about.  I didn't see any of his house except for the front door where the snow-shovel was kept during winter.  Once, I was locked out and asked to use his bathroom and he stayed inside the house, though I could hear PBS Create blaring from the living room.  He sort of shrank into his chair and pretended not to be home.  I was, of course, perplexed, though one can't be perplexed about peeing for very long.  Afterward, I didn't judge.  I made myself forget about it.  Then, late that year, Somiley started to have visitors.  First, my wife said Somiley's son was there--wasn't it funny that he was named Bo?--she said.  Charlotte's always interrupting herself.  'Not really, Charlie' I must have said because she shoved me at some point during that conversation.  Charlotte remarked at how Bo had two boys to match our own, and that she couldn't tell if his wife was wearing a weave or not.  Her hair was styled so beautifully and she wondered if she could try it?  Was there a way to politely ask?  One of my wife's co-workers took her to see Good Hair, with Chris Rock in it during the summer.  I assume it was a funny movie.  I also assume that Charlotte likes me making fun of her, for coming to me with such easy set-ups.  Oh, dammit, I can't cross that out, either.  Anyways, my wife is charming, really charming if you would just try to get to know us, Mr. Tannenbaum.  She's silly, but she doesn't mean any harm.

On the other hand, and what I want you to know is, your walls are thin.  I heard you when you shouted that I was a terrible neighbor.  Have you lived in a rowhouse before?  When Somiley was there, we heard a few arguments come through the walls too.  First, with his daughter-in-law with the 'good weave' as my wife says--sadly, I don't know this woman's name.  She should have been the one who sold you the house, the real estate agent.  Next, Bo would come without the kids or wife and he and his father would get loud.  I heard only parts of their arguments.  At that time, it was something about Somiley needing a ride to get places.  His Cadillac hadn't been moved from its parking space all last winter, come to think of it.  After I got laid off, I didn't have much else to do.  I found a way to offer him a ride, politely, I thought, but that conversation ended badly.  We heard less and less from him and more and more from his son.  The Metro Access van and sometimes a shuttle from George Washington Hospital Center would drop him off.  I was born at GW, not that I remember it.  But I always think it when the name comes up.  A worker would try to help Somiley inside his house every time, but he refused.  I could tell by their looks, they hated Somiley like I did once.  If it weren't for the economy, the one hospital guy I noticed would have pitched that snowball in his hand, during the winter of 2011.

The snow almost didn't come at all that year.  In fact, I felt certain that it wouldn't, and I also wanted an excuse to talk to Somiley, so one day, making my snow shovel more than obvious where I stood on his back porch, I knocked on his door.  He came bundled up and we sat on his porch.  Somiley did not look good at all.  Pale for him, even gaunt-looking.  He wasn't going to the hospital anymore.  I think I knew.  Charlotte says that I can't have known, but right then, I knew.  It was going to be his last Christmas.

"You know, my son works down at the National Zoo.  That's why he's here sometimes."

I doubted that, until Somiley started to smile with his abominably straight teeth.  I watched him talk about the Invertebrate House, Bo called it 'Inverts' and that his son cleaned a tank full of hissing cockroaches when he started out.  Now, he ordered a team of volunteers around who giggled through cleaning up after animals, chopping earthworms... you name it, they did it with him and they loved it, for some reason.  Somiley was proud, saying that about his son Bo.  There was an octopus at Inverts--I'd seen the octopus, but I hadn't realized it wasn't the exact same octopus I knew as a child.  Somiley knew all the good stuff, the real stuff.  The reasons behind everything. 

"I think I can... I think I can ask him.  You could take your boys with him to see what goes on behind the lobster tank, or how they feed the spiders.  Would they like that, Tim?"

"Oh, that's kind of you, but my boys are getting too old for the Zoo.  They'd just complain at me and make fools of themselves.  Don't trouble yourself.  If I can't shovel your walk, since the forecast was wrong about snow, yet again... is there anything else I can do for you, Dr. Somiley?"

"Nobody's too old for nature, Bo.  Don't go thinking that just cause you do something unconventional, that it's useless."

"But I'm Tim.  Dr. Somiley, are you alright?  I think you should get back inside."

"You chose to work from the heart.  No shame in that.  Sometimes it's not as tangible as looking inside a person's mouth and seeing that they need a filling.  Sometimes, people need to smile.  The one thing daddy, your grandaddy taught me.  Nature can heal a body like nothing else.  It's why I got sent back to Georgia."

I'm a bit of a sleuth, you might have already sensed it.  "Was that really the reason?"

Somiley stood in the doorway, looking exhausted.  He’d slipped into some kind of… I dunno, another way of speaking, as if he were at home, really down home.  "No.  But it's what your granddad told me.  He had some stuff goin' on... but now that I'm older, I think it was nice of him, to go out of his way and make it bigger and better than it really was.  Just because he did it in a strange way don't mean it wasn't gettin' at the truth.  Now, you keep at it, Tim.  Keep those boys smilin'.  You reach out however you can.  Whatsoever you do, do good work."  He lifted his hands up and reminded me of a preacher.  That's not racist, is it?  I hope not.  He looked like a preacher.  He felt to me like a preacher.  That was my last conversation with Somiley.

He also spoke a lot differently around his son than he did me.  Sometime after New Years' an ambulance came to the house.  Mr. Somiley had passed away.

So that you understand, the house you're living in right now isn't even yours.  It almost went to Bo and his sons who are the same age as my sons.  My wife was dead-set on asking Bo’s wife about the weave, over tea someday.  We were ready to help the family move on.  I found a plastic snow-ball gun thing at the Target on Columbia Road.  I told Dannie and James that they would be in charge of artillery and would have to keep the snowballs coming.  Dannie was a senior in high school.  He actually wanted to be in the Phelps-Somiley Snow War of 2012.  It was to be the snow-ball fight to end all snowball fights.  But only if Dannie could use the Snowshooter Mega-Apocalypse 9000. 

Mr. Tannenbaum, the land you live on is sacred ground.  It is a battlefield where men who spend their entire summers wrestling with, um, lobsters and invertebrates and stuff come home then make ready to dig into the trenches.  It is a place where oldsters and youngsters make a pact to be bad once a year, while the wives sit down to talk about fake hair, of all things.  If you had any balls about you yesterday, you would have taken that snow-ball to the face.  You would have liked it and you would have returned fire!

I suppose this started out as an apology letter, evidence of how I’m a good neighbor, but now it's not.  This is documentation, with a copy for myself to-file, that when the Somileys could not move in and raise a third generation because it was too painful, I didn't give up.  We invited you over and you never came.  I asked you politely about where we should build our new fence and you only grunted at me.  I always try and scooch up so that you can have a parking space if no one else takes it.  I ask if you've been to the Zoo yet.  I understand that people want their privacy, especially these days.  Especially in this city.  And just because you're of an age, I know you don't want others assuming that you need help, so after this, I won't push anymore.

But now you know that's why I did it.  I was trying to be a good neighbor.  I am sorry that I aimed for the head.  Being out of work, I play too many console games not to make it a kills hot on the first try, it wasn't anything personal.  But I no longer want to live in a city where people don't say hello on the streets or know how their neighbors are really doing.  Nor do I want to live in a world where a grown man can't throw a friendly snowball across the fence. 

Regards and have a Happy Holiday,

Tim Phelps

Northwest, DC.

Tim Phelps, his family, and all his neighbors are fictional characters based on many of my real life experiences growing up, volunteering, playing, and working as a black—err, an African American--uh, no let's stick with black woman in Northwest Washington, DC.

Slowing down 'teh storiez'

Hi everyone,

Those lucky folks who are subscribed to my Randitty Newsletter know that I planned to post several new exciting stories, a webcomic about fashionista cats and dazzle you all with more Xena: Warrior Princess-style writing tips in 2014.

And, if you're a long-time reader, having followed my blog since before the newsletter, then you also know that sometimes my plans get completely derailed by bouts of I-need-to-finish-my-novel-now-oh-my-zombie-Jesus-ness!!*

Phobos Xo Robobos on hiatus

Sigh... I think I am going to try my hand at posting bedtime stories once a week on Thursday nights at least... and then there will be the sporadic post about books I'm reading and inspiring writer experiences... and writer bitching too... Of course I have to do that.

But, mainly, I wanted to convey to you all that I won't be posting updates of Phobos Xo Robobos like I wanted. The next major story update on this blog won't be 'till June or so.

Whaa--? Wha' happened?**

In the middle of a nostalgic turn (turn? We've been watching too much Downton Abbey) regarding that precious novel manuscript about the talking horses that I've been dreaming about writing since I was a girl, I realized that it's not okay to begin working on a novel right after college and then still be struggling to finish it, um... eight years later? After I finished panicking, I got pissed. Some of you writers out there know that feeling, I think. Well, you'd better. (I best not be the only one!)

There have been plenty of other successful writing projects over the years, though. Damsel: Once upon a time when I was Catholic... is another unpublished manuscript. So are Aisha, the Celestial War, and Carnivory: The art of eating one's self. Mi'raah is an adaptation of a fourth novel in progress that I have lying around on my laptop. And then, there's a fifth novel that some of my old writer group friends might remember: Godkillers that I've never mentioned on the blog. (You guys remember, right? That leather-clad Rebecca, the reluctant goddess and the atheist emperor?) Each of these stories is hundreds of pages long and completely unique in tone and subject matter. All have been waiting in fourths, in halves or setting around like swiss cheese with holes between scenes and future chapters waiting for me to fill them in... but not until I finish the horse story first. I've been living like that forever.

Well, alright. Just one bedtime story, okay?

So, you know, in all seriousness — not cool, dude. I'll try my best to post the lovely bed time stories on Thursday nights, but I can't stand the wait on my novel any longer. Updating ye olde Randitty blog with more really involved novellas is going to get pushed to the wayside until this summer, while I continue to balance my nine-to-five and then the second shift I usually pull most days after work to focus on just my novel.

I know it isn't the happiest news, but then again, it's exciting, too, isn't it? I'm finally going to finish! And then, you can read about the horses and become obsessed with them as I have and then we can cackle maniacally together, our crooked fingers clawing the air, and then get out of breath and realize how silly we look, and then laugh even harder and have to sit down, and then feel bad about maybe getting too old for these things, wonder about picking up an exercise class or eating more organic food, and why is it so hard to meet nice guys — that always randomly comes up in conversation with my girlfriends, and isn't Justin Timberlake still sooo awesome? I'm glad he retook his place in normal conversational references as the 'rightful Justin' (not that weird Bieber fellow), then suddenly you check your watch and... bam! You're 30. What the hell happened, I was supposed to finish that novel by now? Welp, here I go...

Please wish me luck,

Janica

* A Futurama reference.
**A Mighty Wind reference.

Phobos Xo Robobos

Chapter One: Kashizaerian

Father Dukensis unsheathed hands from up his green sleeves, snarled, and began just shooing people into their proper places. The other clans weren’t moving fast enough, were they? And they weren’t all wearing their robes properly, were they? No. And nobody was making their signs properly at the pentagram—of course they weren’t! Ugh! Urghrrrr…

“You all take your sour faces off, this is church, not some punishment… and the emerald duke should be up, up, over your eyes… then, it’s a finger raised at north, east, south-east, south-west, then true west… that’s it, five times. I wanna see that on each one of you when you enter the room.” He threw his hands up again. “Now—come on, now! How the young people s’posed to know it if the grown folk don’t even… urgh…”

All these black people who were about the same height, though among some clans, they were just evenly short—began to file neatly, raise their hoods with flicks of cocoa, honey or cinnamon wrists and bowed to the pentragram behind the altar. Fathers moved their daughters along to the benches, then stood behind them at protective watch. Mothers had each of their sons by the shoulders, guiding them to stand in five radiating lines around the altar. Then, each mother eased that one hand, resting it supportively at her son’s back. Sons raised their chins. Daughters in flat-ironed, twisted pigtails opened the prayer books.

The altar was a runed thing with dog’s feet, carved from jade.

As the procession finished, it swole up and enriched into a spiritual so mournful flowers could wilt at it—and so the morning glory vines going up the walls did. And, dogs would have bayed too, so of course all the animals in that great big place started to bark and howl with a deep regret that they also
felt but could not understand. Or, did they understand through that feeling?

The sound of it all, and the incense raised up past the green stained glass and caught in the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral.

Father Dukensis bowed his head, and when he raised it again, he carefully adjusted his hood with its symbol, the duke, so that it fell just over his eyes. “My people…”

The clans saluted him with a foot stomped and a fist in the air briefly, then let their arms drop with their voices into silence.

“One of our sons,” he eyed those making faces, “everyone’s son, has betrayed us. Or, it could become a betrayal, couldn’t it? If we let him keep running around outside in the Ow like he hasn’t got any gods-given sense--”

“No home training, no sir, Father Dukensis!”

Father Dukensis should have expected it, but Deacon Carrussis’ round, bottomless voice could always make a person brace themselves. People in the congregation also seemed to catch themselves at hearing it, as if they were naked to it and caught in a chill breeze.

“And I—”

“Oh, yes, sir, Father Dukensis!”

“Yes… Ah… my son. Here he lies, that liar. He has loosed Phobos Robobos, and he should pay for it, shouldn’t he? Help me! All of you help me to march this boy’s good-for-nothing black ass right back here, for all the grannies, and all the poppas, to set that boy straight! Wait—can you hear me? Can you see me and feel me, Dukensians?” He passed hands through the air over the person in robe laying still on the green altar.

Now, they were back in a fervor. The girls read loudly from the black-and-green books, the fathers shouted in chant, and the mothers stamped their feet and let their knees buckle as they rolled their heads over their shoulders, crying out at intervals that they had caught the energy.

The sons raised their daggers and pointed the power back at Father Dukensis on the altar.

And then the last son, laying on their altar, had been spoken of as a rude, silly boy. But, the body of a man was there. Robed in wealthy money-green like the rest.

“Oh, I see where you are now, Kashizaerian… death in the Ow is not even far enough away… I can haul you back here, ungh… ‘cause I brought you into this world, ungh… and only I can take you out, can’t I? Ungh!” Father Dukensis made fists in the air and pulled them to himself as he puffed up his chest.

“Yessir! Oh, Father Dukensis, you’ve got that boy now, pants fallin’ down round his ankles and evry’thang, you got ‘em now, father! Yes! Sir!”

An altar boy, his robes done in spiraling, sparkling lime designs came. Father Dukensis waved the incense smoke hanging between them. He selected a long pin from the many instruments in the box that was opened and offered up. He held this for all to see and scream their praises at.

One old woman and one little girl seated together among the fathers, because they were unmatched, stopped their worship.

“Mother…”

The old woman shut her eyes and looked away from him, got a hand on the little girl’s shoulder when she tried to get up. Leaned down, covered the girl’s mouth and cussed when she started to scream. Father Dukensis leaned over the altar on one hand, found the place he wanted, then struck the pin deep, into his son’s gut.

Emerald sparks of their conjuring united with the ash of the bonfires, braiding heavy smoke up through the highest turrets. Beyond, it looked as if there were real, vile green weather above Mount Duke.


Kashizaerian Dukensis sat with both his dirty boots hitched on the silver ring round his chair’s legs, an old dry hen’s bone in one greasy hand, and the other, cleaned, on the glass machine before him. He was amazed. A machine, but made of glass? Lights inside. No gears, no clicking anythings that he could see. Just lights and flickering bright panels. Sweet, shimmering music from inside there too. On the surface of the glass box, three reels with numbers and symbols painted on clicked and whirled in unison when he pulled the lever.

Star… Star… 13.

“Bah! Why is such a bad number even on the reel…” but, he smiled at it. Kashizaerian was so enchanted that the pain in his gut subsided some time ago. Though, he feared to get up from the machine again.

Kashizaerian was a thin young man when he didn’t mean to be, being a bachelor, but he filled out instantly into something even more handsome—this he delved into in pure innocence of himself—whenever times were good and he had more meals than usual. So, he was lithe and funny in one season, and then got brawny and warm enough to hug well in the next. And, he could dance. He laughed whenever he remembered how he could dance.

Kashizaeriean could smile like a winter’s dawn. Beautiful promise of warmth, but then he’d escape, so easily, if you didn’t know how to keep him. If you did not bundle yourself up against his cold ways, work fast to win him and keep him inside.

Well, his mother used to say so.

“What is a man?” he half sang to himself. He kept breaking up the song with ‘purburrs’ from his tired lips and bluffs of air sucked in and out from his cheeks, trying to make… what he believed was better off as prose. He wanted it to sound harder, like it was falling down a mountain side, as he once fell, or stumbling round creek rocks. A man wasn’t a kid with a-old chicken bone in his greasy hand, playing games like this all day through. “But then again, man? Here I am, man.” Another pull of the machine’s handle. “Eat that, you can.” He watched the reels inside the lighted box spin. “Make me…” bluff-bluff. Purr-purr, “…a better man, man.” He waited, “Man? Oh man!” then, “Damn!”

Star… Diamond… Raspberry.

“What a waste of this man’s beautiful, precious time.” But he pulled he lever again.

Akila, the only other person in the gambling place that was his age, spotted him eventually—of course she did. A handsome and almost tall fellow, with dark skin she rarely saw on people. He wore the robe of a rich man, or the color of a rich man’s royal bank notes. But, then again, this young stranger possessed the mannerisms of a fool. A sly fool who didn’t care what anyone thought. His pants were half down his bottom when he scooted up in his seat and the cape fell away a moment. The beautiful green hood he kept down, but those arms and legs looked so strong the way he sat in his half-angry hunch, she assumed his face must be just as good.

Akila raised her silver tray of beers in steins, and vials of shimmering libations over her shoulder and waltzed over with hips at full swing. Some rich boy run away on holiday.

“Sirrah, might I offer thou—”

He grabbed her bare leg. Akila’s skirt was short—shortened—by profession, but patrons making full use of the uniform was
never something one… expected.

Akila had dug her soft blue painted nails into the silver polish of the tray balanced on her shoulder. The same color over her eyes warmed up as her honey face blushed. She set her teeth against the anger rising in the pit of her chest. But, then again, found herself wondering… hadn’t he looked her over first?

The hen’s bone was now somewhere on the floor between them. The young man in the green hood, his hand really holding the meat of her leg, studied Akila’s eyes, and then her body for another time before he must have realized that there was also emotion going between them. Hers was not the same as his.

“…Well?” she fumed.

“I’m sorry… but it’s what you’ve got on.” He waited, then came up with, “You’re really sexy.”
Akila’s knees went right then, and she ended up offering him the drink she almost spilled on him to help cover for herself. Next, balanced on her heels a little, leaned and unfolded a cloth napkin over his knee where he might set down his drink while he gambled.

“I’m very… um… thank you.”

“Yeah… yeah, you definitely look great.”

“I’m Akila. I also, you know… I take a break for supper at—”

“This is a gambling machine. It is, isn’t it?”

Akila had been caught up in his eyes. “Oh, yes… that’s true. You’ve not seen many of these have you? I haven’t either, really… well, until I came here. There are others here in Searing City, and in Purvillion too. Every real big city with a gambling parlour is going to have these soon. They’re called slot machines. Money goes in, and so much beauty comes out. Aren’t mages brilliant?”

He smiled. “The hell.”

Akila thought there should be more, but that was the man’s whole sentence. She checked over her shoulder to make sure there weren’t any other customers that time of day, and that nobody was watching her from the bar.

“Look, this is really incredible, right? I’ve not seen another brown person in a really long time.”
He’d gone back to the machine. “Mhrm.”

“Where are you from? I thought we didn’t get way out here. Gods, it gets lonely… you know, I can cook a mean turkey leg, bake gold bricks…” he ignored her. She licked her lips quickly, “And, so, you’re a mage?”

“Kashizaerian.”

“Kashiz… Kash…shiz… air re-an? Kashizaerian.”

“Yep.”

“I’m Akila.” She waited impatiently for him to do more than pull the lever or grunt. “Okay. I’m just going to call you Kash.”

“That’s mean.”

“What’s mean?”

“To call a person out of their name. A-ki-la. That’s pretty. So, hey, what happened? I thought my name was pretty too.”

“I didn’t say—”

“No, it was the way you said my name. You want me.” And then he turned and smiled as if he was going to eat her. “Oh gods, and look what I did to you, poor thing. You poor, pretty thing…” and he used the napkin she’d folded in his lap to wipe her leg free of whatever grit and grease had been on his hand.

Akila froze.

“You gotta tell me, how does this thing work? It’s eating all my money.”

“Right, so then it’s working fine.”

Kash paused to put the heel of his hand on his forehead.

“Oh no, headache? Want me to get a potion for you?”

“Nobody can fix it. Playing helps it, I think it does. So, help me keep playing. Unless you’re offering for me to play with you?”

Akila did a half-good job of playing offended and smacking his shoulder somewhat.

Kash finally pushed his hood back. His coarse raven hair had been woven into about a hundred complex braids running over, under, into each other, branching into runes and symbols over his scalp. At the back of his neck, the ends of the braids were hidden underneath small golden panels. Three arrowheads that pointed into one another.

“Boy, do I love your hair. I haven’t seen hair done like that on a man in a really, really long time.”
Kash pulled Akila into his lap, the free drink finished. She set down her tray on the stool next to theirs.

“Now, tell me how this works.”

“Where in all the realm are you from? At first I thought you were… but, no, I’ve never met a man like you before. Not in my whole life.”

He shrugged and said, “I didn’t come from so far away, I walked here.” Then, “when I pass my hand over this stained glass portion here, the lily flower, I feel as if it’s coming to me. It wants to bloom, I’m asking it to bloom with my hand, and then good numbers come up on this reel. Even numbers, and powerful numbers… an eight, for instance. There’s some kind of conductor beneath this, isn’t there? And it knows how many times I’ve pulled the lever, over there, and how long I’ve been waiting. The lei lines inside must be exactly, exquisitely done.” He smiled, “I’m so mad at that!”

Akila put her arms around him instead. “Have you any idea how long I’ve been waiting?”

But all of Akila’s attempts at Kash failed after that. He was into the machine, and so she helped him with it. Kash was thrilled by the thing. He seemed more relieved of his headaches, the more she helped him to understand how it worked. She described how it looked on the inside, a dome within a dome of glass, or like a faceted jewel. She told Kash about the the last time the mage came by to service it. She told him how often gamblers won each day, and how much gold they won. She told him the patterns of the other machines, and that there were far better machines at the casino down the street where she also worked. Someone once won three thousand gold pieces there after playing the biggest machine for a day and a half, and then somebody else once sat at the same machine for three grueling days of bar-maid-ing (with no tips at all) and had to be thrown out when they were stinking and penniless and annoying the one barmaid assigned to him that whole time!

“Don’t let that happen to you, Kash.”

“You’re my lucky charm.” He kissed her arm.

Akila was delighted, until she realized that was a strange place to be kissed. It wasn’t very… focused at all… “My real kisses give the best luck.”

Then, she fell out of his lap. Kash had got to his feet. He raised his hands up overhead, waiting.

Diamond... Diamond... Diamond.

Akila swore and recovered for a solid moment before the orange glass machine went off in alarum. Enchanted music seemed to ring from everywhere. She told Kash she was sure it’d never done that before. “What did you do!”

“I won!”

“How much did we win?” she shoved him.

“The whole thing. I beat the machine.” He gazed up at her, beaming, “Everything evil, writhing and chirruping smile upon you—”

“What did you just call me?”

Then, Kash opened his arms. His fiendish smile set again. He came forward as Akila startled back, stepped out of her shoe and bent the heel. His lips did not move. His teeth were tight. But some sure unholy chanting spoke through him. Out and around the bared teeth, through the whites of his eyeballs… The voices billowed from behind his cape and cast the deep green hood over his braided head.

There were voices of women, men, children chanting in agony, “Kashiz, Kashiz, Kashizaerian!”

A black gale flew out from behind the green cape. Kash yelled, snatched arms around Akila and turned her around. He slammed them both down into the glass machine. The bright ambrosia shell burst. Its delicate stained glass innerworkings melted and crumpled around them.

The man she wanted was over her, shuddering, as beads of hot white light bounced and popped  along invisible lei lines loosed overhead. The force of whatever it was had torn Kash’s wild hair from its braids. He gasped hard as sweat and blood slipped down the sides of his face.

“Kash… Kash?”

But the kind stranger had retreated far inside of himself, perhaps deep into another world.