Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Avagadro’s Number: another exerpt, from a lazy daniel
okay I’m sort of short on time. thurs and fri I’ll be in a conference all day, and it’s late, and I haven’t been writing much, and the crap I writ needs to be edited, and anyway I just found an electronic copy of my unfinished and unfinishable mystery thriller novel, so instead of giving you high quality new writing, here’s another exerpt of some crappy old writing from 10 years ago. And just to fill in the details, this whole 80 page manuscript is beyond logic and reason, so don’t worry about not understanding the subtlties. None of this damn thing makes any sense, so sit back and enjoy the bizarre world of Avagadro’s Number: The Part About Meeting Agent Fraiser!
She was confused by Stan’s sudden departure, but mostly she was distressed by the harassment Bobby seemed intent on imposing on her. “OK, lipstick, you like line dancing? How about ‘line’ down at my place? Hey, ‘voulez vous’? Or what?” He had backed her up against the bar, away from the other patrons, and now he towered over her, his lascivious teeth reflecting the garish colors of neon beer signs. But he pulled away just enough for her to get her elbows up when Stan fell through the door.
Stan’s head hit the floorboards hard with a hollow sound, face first, and he didn’t move a muscle once he landed. A dark pool quickly formed on the floor beneath him. Bobby went to his side, grabbed him by his bangs and indecorously lifted up his head. Stan looked pale and his eyes were glazed. Blood gushed from his throat, which had been sliced to the cervical vertebrae as if by a bandsaw, very cleanly, so that the wound was pulled open by Bobby’s grip on the prone corpse’s hair.
The crowd at the tavern fell silent. The woman began to shake. Bobby dropped Stan’s head and returned to the woman, grabbed her arm tightly. “Now I’m not giving you a choice. I’m taking you home to mother. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“The hell I am… you are…,” she groaned. She was starting to feel sick, watching the pool of blood creep across the floor toward her. He was hurting her arm and she was off guard. She felt that, if he got her outside, she might envy Stan’s swift demise.
The door opened again and a woman of her height, weight, skin color, suit color, hair color, and season strode into the room, stepping easily over Stan’s body. She wore a dahlia in her hair. Bobby and the first woman gaped, and Bobby relaxed his grip on her enough to let her squirm free and pull back.
“Damn you bitch, I’ll…”
“Got a light?” The new woman joined them at the bar.
“You’ve got nothing to do with this. Don’t interfere. I don’t want to have to hurt either of you.”
“You don’t say,” she replied ingenuously. She began to reach into her shoulder bag, but Bobby grabbed her arm to stop her. “Nice try, donut. I don’t…”
His sentence ended in a scream as she took hold of his little finger, pulled it up, and pressed it flat across the back of his hand. When she let it go it stayed there. She went back to her bag, fumbled in it a moment as Bobby screamed, clutching his hand, and then, “There it is,” took out a can of mace and sprayed it down his throat. Bobby hit the floor on his knees, his scream dropping octaves and decibels. She took the empty mace canister in her closed fist and backhanded the butt of it into Bobby’s forehead. He collapsed, still trying to scream, and hit the floor near Stan, whose blood soaked instantly into his shirt.
“We’re leaving,” the flower-wearer said to the other woman, who needed not be asked twice. They were swiftly outside, and she gulped the dark air, incredulous and queasy. “Keep walking. Right here … let me get the door … keep your head down...” The doppelganger let her into a nondescript car parked in a red zone and they drove off without incident. The first woman shivered in the vinyl bucket seat, gasping for breath, her eyes goggling and her skin pale and clammy.
“You need to calm down.”
“Get stuffed. This is a nightmare. What the hell is going on?”
“You’d never follow it in your condition. Calm down. Tell me your name.”
“Like hell. Who are you?”
“Agent Jane Fraser.”
“Agent?”
“I’m with the company.” Agent Fraser was grim. Shadows and highlights chased each other across her face under the ghastly streetlamps as unfamiliar avenues unwound before them.
“The CIA?”
“No.”
“GM?”
“No.” Agent Fraser didn’t crack a smile.
“Not the mob, right?”
Agent Fraser drilled her with an angry glare. “How dare you. I uphold the law. I protect people. You’re here by mistake. This is my life.”
“Well then who the hell are you? What’s with this secret ‘company’ I’m supposed to know about?”
“Muni Power. The Electric Company.”
“Okay, you’re right. I need some rest.”
“Too late. We’re here. 100 North Power Drive.”
Indeed they had. Muni Power HQ was a textbook example of institutional architecture of the early 1970s, tall and broad, with concrete faces punctuated by thousands of tiny windows, cemented shut and each individually neon-lit from outside for a wasteful and useless effect. They drove into the main garage entrance, stopped on the second parking level, and suddenly backed up into an alcove. Agent Fraser pressed a button on her keychain and a door rolled open behind the car. They backed down a ramp into a dark and narrow space.
