In his last days as a man of the cloth, Cardinal Sommer was given
to sitting at cafes, his back always just far enough out of true with the
chair that he could drape one arm over it like the tine of a paper clip.
His grave stare kept the waitstaff at bay, though it also sometimes stalled
pedestrians' lateral progress if he sat near an open storefront.
	One morning the runner from his favorite neighborhood delivery
joint got caught in Sommer's perplexing gaze. He came over and set down his
four bags, each stapled shut, to join the Cardinal.
	"Never seen you this early in the day, man."
	"You should be delivering that food to your customers."
	"I'm running ahead of schedule. No problem! Want a curry on my next
trip out? You can eat it here. They're cool."
	"Delaying on my account will only reflect poorly on you."
	"You gotta be joking! You're one of my regulars. I'll get you basil
chicken, no appetizer, extra rice, medium-hot. Right? It's my treat."
	"I want neither your pity nor your food."
	And so on.

	There were crates waiting for him in storage somewhere. One night
after getting a plaudit from the Pope he'd burned the manifest, but he
could recall the contents of the first few crates by heart. One, balalaika
and mandolin, strings, tuning fork; hat and gloves. Two, boots and belt;
journal; photo album; correspondence; two coats, or was it two coats?
Three, dishware and library (A-J). Four...

	Sommer chose not to sleep his last night in the church. The
patterns on the walls of his quarters had always reminded him of Mexico,
where he'd never been. The images of Mexico that came as he went to sleep
were composed of fragmentary memories about searching northern Spain for
the fabulous elixir his friends told him was brewed in small towns there.
He recalled nothing that happened in the weeks after he found it until the
moment he opened his eyes to find himself sitting upright at the roadside
in new clothes cradling a guitar.
	Because of his surroundings, Sommer recapitulated that teenage
happenstance in his mind seven times over the course of his sleepless
night. As broken as the apparatus of memory was, the story never changed.
Betweentimes he packed and mentally revised some recipes he'd been meaning
to codify.

	Boat, train, taxi, aircraft. After ransacking the youth room for
dice, the former Cardinal consigned himself to chance the next morning as
he wondered where he and his bags would go next. He'd seen those ships
floating by the quays and they always looked seaworthy enough. Fine.
	Before departing he bought a luggage trolley and stopped by the
aging Self-Store at the corner of 4th and Steeple. A rusty little key came
out of his collar. Even once the door was unlocked, Sommer stood outside
crumpling his collar in his left hand and peering viciously into the dust
at his boxes.

written for Adam Fromm in my room 11/16/02

Several bad word choices here; I was slightly too impetuous with transferring things from brain to paper. "Storefront", in para 1, sounds like it's not connected to the cafe, though I can't think of what word would do what I want. "Manifest" is weird if he packed the boxes himself. You can recite things "by heart", but not remember them. "Happenstance" is slightly off, in the fashion of words used by folks trying to put on airs. "Aircraft" is awkward, except that I didn't want to rhyme 'train' and 'plane'. And does the key need to be little?

The dialogue's unnatural, though not messy. I realized as I was doing it (with no plans yet for the rest of the page) that I didn't want anything to *happen* during the conversation; I just wanted to establish a little scene. I hope the "And so on." isn't too arch -- that's the kind of thing I worry about leaving standing alone in a story, but even on rereading it seems right.

A more serious problem, maybe, is that I don't know anything about the Catholic Church. I think I underestimated the size of a cardinal's bailiwick; would he actually be living in a church, as opposed to a full house somewhere else?

I know I spend a lot of time with people who are about to abandon their careers. I wanted the Cardinal to be a little different, someone blank enough that his old self went away when he set it aside, but who wanted it back nonetheless. If this vibe is in the story, it's probably obscured by the fact that I never said why he was leaving the fold and so, as the world is right now, that probably says "child molester". Not what I intended!

I became very conscious of using 'and' to draw out a sentence when maybe splitting the motion into several sentences (with the result that each paragraph might contain less narrative time) would be a better idea. The dice sentence toward the end desperately needs more room. Something to work on for me.

The stuff that is meant to tie it together (food, staring, musical instruments, the crates) is spaced out more evenly than I think I usually manage. I've always tried not to make the endings too pat (or too telegraphed), though, so that's not a huge exciting improvement.

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

<< back to more fast custom fiction<<