Archive for August, 2006»
Fictionlet
“Why do we come to these parties, again?” Brigid asked, giving the olive-on-a-cocktail-sword in her drink a wary eye.
“Well I come to them because I spend all day sitting in the apartment at my computer and need to get out among the populi every now and again,” said Greg. “Why you do, is entirely open to debate, but I have a feeling it has to do with not wanting to sit home alone listening to crickets chirp on Friday nights.”
“Yo, Greg! Yo, Brigid!” said Treville, sidling up to them. “Whattya think of this music? OMGWTFBBQ’s latest. I just bought this CD.”
“Did you?” said Greg. “Well yes, as thumpa-thumpa music goes it’s not bad, but I think you’ve gotten confused, old scout. This isn’t OMGWTFBBQ, it’s the Sexy Hazmats.”
Treville stopped and listened. “What? No. Are you sure? No.”
“Yup, quite sure,” said Greg.
Treville’s eyes shifted back and forth a few seconds, then he said, “Oh, yeah, you’re right, of course it is. I didn’t recognize it, ’cause I only have their first album. So much better than this one.”
“They’ve only had the one album,” said Brigid. “They split up two months after it was released.”
Treville stopped again. “Oh. Uh. Are you sure? I must be thinking of their EP.”
“You’re thinking of OMGWTFBBQ again,” said Greg. “They had an EP.”
“Oh like you know!” said Treville. “Just ’cause you’ve never heard the Sexy Hazmats’ EP, doesn’t mean they didn’t have one!”
“All right, all right,” said Greg.
“I’ve got all the Sexy Hazmats’ albums, I’ll have you know, and OMGWTFBBQ, too! My music collection is awesome.”
“Hey,” said Brigid, “where’s my little olive-on-a-cocktail-sword?”
Greg declined to answer; in a moment of quick thinking he’d slipped it out of her drink to keep it from ending up in Treville’s eye.
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
“No,” Greg said. “I can tell you right now, Brigid isn’t going to put up with the idea of staying in Boston another week, particularly not if there’s a get-rich-quick scheme involved.”
“Brigid isn’t going to put up — what are you, afraid of women?” Uncle Bob demanded.
“Afraid of women?” said Greg. “Me?”
“Yes! Practically cowed.”
Greg raised his eyebrows as he considered the question. “Well, yes, I am, now that you mention it.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I can’t help it, they’re intimidating! I never know just what I’m supposed to do or say around them. Most of the time I end up fiddling with my notebook and saying something fatuous.”
Bob put his hand over his eyes. “Greg,” he said. “Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg. Greg!”
“Uncle Bob,” Greg replied. “Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob!”
“This is no good. We’ve got to un-whip you, PDQ. Give you some spine! And I know just how to do it.”
“No we don’t,” said Greg. “What we need to do is check out of this grimy hotel and go home while we can still escape with our lives.”
“Why do you let that woman walk all over you?” Uncle Bob demanded. “Stand up to her!”
“Eh?” Greg said.
“You’ve got to show her who’s boss!” Uncle Bob said, poking Greg’s chest hard enough to leave a bruise.
“She already knows.”
“Show no weakness! If you give her an inch, she’ll take a mile!”
“She’s welcome to it. What would I want with a mile?”
Uncle Bob put his hand over his eyes again, and gave a deep sigh. Finally he said, “Well I hate to do this to you, Gregger, but I’m not leaving Boston yet. I’m staying here at least another week, maybe more, so if you want to go back home you’re going to have to walk.”
“But Uncle Bob–!” Greg said.
“And I might add, your mother would be very disappointed in you, abandoning your closest living relative this way. I counted on you, depended on you, and you’ve let me down. So much for family ties! But if this is how you honor your late mother’s memory, well, so be it.”
Greg winced, and sighed. “Okay, look,” he said. “I’ll talk to Brigid and see what she has to say. But really–”
Uncle Bob lit up like a Christmas tree. “Well done, boy, well done! Your mother would be proud!”
“One would think you had a Ouija board, the way you seem to keep communing with her,” Greg muttered, and headed for the hallway.
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
“Well, well, my dear old harpy, welcome home!” Greg chirped as Brigid elbowed her way through the door. “Here, let me take some of that,” he added, taking a few of the cardboard boxes weighing her down and scampering off into the apartment with them.
“Why are you so obnoxiously bouyant?” Brigid asked. “As if you need a reason.”
“I have a reason, and a good one!” he answered, stacking the boxes on the table next to her pile of papers that had grown from a small stack to a precarious tower in the past four days. “Funny Looks is burned onto the CD and plunked into the mailbox and winging its way to New York even as we speak. Two weeks ahead of schedule, no less! As they say in the donut business, slam dunk!”
“Well at least one of us was productive today,” muttered Brigid. “I’ve been in about sixty meetings since 8:30 this morning, and this damn proposal is supposed to be downtown no later than 11:00 tomorrow. One of these days I’m going to be given a proposal due in two weeks instead of two days, and I’ll probably keel over dead from the shock.”
“Well, that sucks. But Doctor Greg has the cure. Pack up your proposal in an old kit bag for an hour or two and I’ll take you out for a celebratory dinner, and then over to the coffee shop to get you caffienated up for your imminent all-nighter.”
Brigid narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, I’m sometimes wonder if Yvonne isn’t on to something about you.”
“Don’t get mushy on me now,” said Greg. “Or I’ll rescind the offer!”
-The Gneech
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Fictionlet
“Take a cab?” Greg said, in apparent astonishment. “Don’t be ridiculous; I’ll drive the two of you to this binge. And in fact, I’ll come back in a few hours to pick you up again. I’m not useful for much, I know, but I can at least drive a car.”
“Really?” said Brigid. “You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” said Greg. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Brigid shifted a little. “I dunno; I guess I just wasn’t expecting it, considering how much you dislike my mother.”
“I don’t dislike your mother!” Greg protested, wounded to the quick. “I don’t dislike her at all! I just find her exhausting. She’s perfectly fine in small doses.”
“Exhausting?” said Brigid. “That’s a new one on me. How do you figure that one?”
“Well,” said Greg, apparently reluctant to just come out and say it. “She’s tiring. You know. She’s like the drum-beating rabbit in the television commercial, who just keeps on going and going. I can’t keep up with the never ending stream of people or things she doesn’t approve of.”
-The Gneech
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