Waking up at dawn gave Vladimir just barely enough time to corral
each of his intended sex partners and bag them. He moaned a single word in-
to the ear of each body below him as he came, then, after a suitable inter-
val, found a way to point out what time it was and shoo whoever it was out
the door. It belatedly occurred to him that Dana and Harlie weren't talking
anymore, which made for a tough choice: put them in contact himself and hope
for the best, or look for another way to get the gossip to its destination.
Vladimir dialed some friends he thought could help and found out Dana was
already having coffee with Harlie's brother that weekend. It would do.

	Weeks later, the funny stories about Vladimir were finally reaching
the ears of his beloved Lilah in Senegal. She'd figured it out when the
braggart of an ambassador she worked for came back with his tale of con-
quest, but she waited for all five words to come in: "Rake!" "Misses!"
"Birthday!" "Girl!" "Lilah!" Dana was the only one who hadn't remarked on
Vlad's faked clock-fixation (or else her section of the grapevine was the
only one to lose vital information) so Lilah sent Dana a cable reading
BETWEEN TWELVE AND TWO RIGHT STOP TELL ME MORE STOP, hoping to get a rise
out of her.
	Lilah planned to respond on Valentine's Day by inserting some ris-
que lines into a speech she wrote for the ambassador. A visiting luminary
delivered the address instead (though fortunately the BBC still carried it)
and got quite red-faced over ostensibly classic Senegalian poetry. "Don't
worry about it," the ambassador said when she explained; "everyone back
home still thinks the Senegalese ride hippos for transport and communicate
with gargling noises. A bit of high-class smut can only help their reput-
ation. If your scansion had been better, I imagine even Burrows wouldn't
have paused long enough in reading it off the page to start hyperventilat-
ing."
	Indeed, the entire thing passed without comment, though Vladimir
caught the whole thing on tape the first time around. He was watching it
again one night when the phone rang.
	"Is Estragon there?"
	Vladimir's face lit up. "I'm sorry, but he's not."
	"How about Pozzo?"
	"No..."
	"Well then, is there any chance of me getting Lucky?"
	"Are you really home?"
	"They sent us all off for one-week PR trips this summer, but I
couldn't go. So I'm here now."
	"That saves me the trouble of spelling out 'NICE ASS' in your next
satellite photo."
	"You could just shout it out the window," Lilah said, and rang the
doorbell.

written for Scooter in my office 10/15/01

I may have to suggest that people not send me whole sentences as one of their things; it never seems to work out. (I wasn't *planning* to drop the one here, but time ran low and I had to get to the intended ending.) I felt rushed doing this story, and it feels accordingly sloppy. I used some phrases twice in close proximity, and there's a pronoun in paragraph 3 whose referent is slightly unclear. (It's Lilah; the ambassador is male.)

I've noticed that stories generally fall into two categories. Subtractive stories, like this one, come from me envisioning a big plot that I want to suggest each aspect of through judicious removal of any detail that would hit the same point twice. These tend to feel hurried to me while I'm doing them, and I think they can be annoyingly dense to read. On the other hand, additive stories start with something simple that suggests a very short path I can elaborate on. Most of my favorites are this type, as is the favorite of the only person who's admitted to having one so far (the inimitable Clara Gaw). This in turn sort of suggests two things...

Thing one is that I'm not a great judge of quality when I've done something myself. Re-reading a subtractive story, I always remember the roads unfollowed and notice the lines which don't say exactly what I wanted them to. Additive stories tend to make their own way as I work through them, sealing off unused possibilities. This may be visible to other people, but I doubt it weighs on them much.

Thing two is that I should perhaps stop trying to tell stories and work on making tiny things pretty. More dancing, less architecture.

Hey, speaking of me trying to express as much as possible implicitly instead of using valuable space putting it out in the open, it's funny that I didn't even think it worthy of comment for Lilah to have a cell phone at the end.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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