"Ah, Christ! That's hot!"
  "Yeah, they call them hot springs, you know."
  "Hilarious. Come on and dive in."
  "I'm up here with the beer. Enjoy yourself."
  Splash splash. "You hear anything about Gretchen?"
  "Says she's off down to Aotea in a week."
  "Aotea?"
  "It's an island."
  "I'm warning you..."
  "Said she'd work there for the summer and we could all visit."
  "I'm not going to fucking Aotea. Two hours on a boat."
  "She said you'd say that. She said you go to Waiheke all the time,
don't you?"
  "The video store's better there."
  "Mm hm."
  "How about Mark?"
  "Planning to pine for lost love all summer. They synchronized their
watches so he could go out and walk around the city every night at the
same moment as Cecilia is doing her rounds in the forest in Japan."
  "When's that?"
  "She's got to go all around the nature preserve at midnight..."
  "So he's busy at 9. He can come out for a drink with us after."
  "You've got it backward."
  "Japan's three hours away, you bastard. I know what I'm talking
about."
  "It's the other three hours. 3 AM, and he's not coming out with us."
  "That boy needs a dip in the springs, that'll get his head back on
right."
  "Sure."
  "Toss me another beer."
  "The last Tui? Or..."
  "That's the one."
  "So, you're really not going to see Gretchen?"
  "I'll see her when she gets back."
  "It's only a ferry ride. I heard the two of you were--"
  "Lies!"
  "You've never slept with a girl and NOT denied it to me."
  "Naaaaow, really. Wasn't like that. She's more like Mark and Cecilia
and them when you get down to it. The trees and the stars at night and
poems and all of it. I'd've broken her heart later if I'd done it. I
told her we should be friends."
  "Because you can't be bothered with trees."
  "Can't be bothered with girls."
  "Mm hm."
  "I love nature as much as anyone. I'm here, aren't I?"
  "Sure, but it's funny..."
  "Funny what?"
  "All the time you spend with girls and you say you can't be bothered.
Whereas I--"
  "Don't moan about it."
  "It's just funny."
  "Christ, did you see that? One of those phosphorescent rocks went off
over there."
  "How do you mean, went off?"
  "I saw it, it looked like firecrackers."
  "I think you've cooked your brain in there."
  "The spring's not so hot any more. Come on in."
  "I'm up here with the beer."

written for Jane Doe #5 while standing up 7/8/03

Another story that's more or less realistic. Funny, eh? I can't think of two more I've done like that off the top of my head, let alone two consecutive ones. I wonder what it means.

If this one doesn't work -- I can't tell -- it may be because I started off looking up Aotea on the net and got too deeply into trying to fake the setting, despite never having been anywhere near New Zealand and not knowing anything about it aside from being able to sing most of The Chills' "Submarine Bells" by heart. So. The internet says that Waiheke and Aotea are beautiful vacation islands located thirty minutes and two hours from Auckland, respectively. They both have video stores listed prominently on the tourism websites I looked at, which makes perfect sense but for some reason struck me as funny; if I had a beach like that nearby I wouldn't be inside watching a movie, and I don't even *like* the beach much.

So anyway, my only point of reference was the tourist resorts a few hours from my hometown in Wisconsin that people occasionally went to for summer jobs when I was younger. Between my ignorance of New Zealand and my inability to write in a plausible dialect there's no particular reason anyone should KNOW where this is supposed to be, except for Jane herself, who's also positioned optimally to be disappointed or annoyed by my getting it wrong.

Enough self-flagellation, though. Aside from it needing more research I am not unhappy with this. The one sound effect ("splash splash") was supposed to be followed by more later on, just to break up the rhythm and maybe give the setting a little physicality, but I got distracted. Looking back at it from the end I think perhaps I could just take that out instead of adding more; the dialogue's just two people, back and forth relatively clearly, so having the entire story be spoken shouldn't be intolerable.

The inclusion of "phosphorescence" at the end is awkward, which is too bad, because it wasn't a last-minute thing -- I had the last few lines in mind from early on. I just forgot how hard it is to change rhythm or create a pause in all-dialogue scenes, so it just comes out of nowhere. I also may have skimped on description at the end because I realized the paper was about to run out.

Sometimes when given a batch of words like this I consciously try to break the obvious but unstated connections between them. This time I didn't mind the setting or using the words in what seem like the intended senses, but I was motivated by how, from over here in unscenic Boston, it seems like natural beauty only gets you so far, even if you appreciate it. You have to want it to matter that your surroundings are beautiful, and not everyone always does.

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

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