Sometimes, I like to read excerpts from writers and try to write like them, so that I may analyze anothers style and maybe add more pieces to my own literary toolbox (as it were).
They sat on either side of the peeled counter, its sides reaching for her unkempt hair, her running mascara, down cheeks and under eyes that stare at him, pressed suit that screams corporate indoctrination, his hair styled too well, his eyes not meeting hers but rather at the table, the papers, their ice creams, melting between them, hers pours over the edge, coating the neck of her chalice with sugar and bits of candy she was never going to eat, his sitting next to the papers, which he shifts away from his vanilla ice cream, keeping the paper dry, making sure the five post it notes where she needs to sign, five red flags that symbol the time has come, no crying can change this, that time was a year ago, when he was still here, when they were still there, when they weren’t here, are pointing out at her, looking her in the eye as her palm turns black, wiping at her face, smearing her makeup, like an atom bomb after image, as they talk about the beginning, the struggles of dating, of college, the struggles of maintaining a relationship, a marriage, a glob of iced cream plummets from the corner, which he saves in a moment of selfish perfectionist heroism, You haven’t changed, awkward shared smiles, one last story of that time in Lake George, when they had shared ice cream and her makeup was perfect.
Cormac McCarthy
They sit on either side of the cracked counter. The papers sit between them like an iceberg clinking among their two ice creams and their juice and bloody mary and their silverware, the man’s roll missing the spoon, the woman’s open, the napkin already a wrinkled tattered mess. He thought of Dali, he thought of them. The man takes a bite and looks at the waiter making eye contact for a moment then looks at the line of stools across from them and wipes at his nose and sculpts at his perfect hair, keeping two fingers up in the air, never a single hair allowed out of place. The man pokes at the tabs sticking out of the packet.
Do we have to do this? The woman’s eyes swim.
Yes. We’d be lying to ourselves.
I thought I wanted this.
He looks out the windows. Cars reflect and refract light in his eyes. Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Is that what we’ve devolved to? The woman’s cheeks streaked with black clumps of mascara, like soot trails, rivers carrying ruin through devastated landscape.
Yeah.
They share a silence. The man traces his finger around the rim of his ice cream, the top missing a singular bite.
I don’t suppose I could stay at the lake still.
Sure. You like autumn well enough. Keep your key. The man thumbs the tabs again tii tii tii tii tii.
Will you be up there the 4th?
Yes. As always.
Will you get another ice cream? He smiles at her, tucks his chin down.
I don’t think I will.
Not one for “The Summer of Yellow Rafts.”
Smiles, Perhaps. That might be nice.
George Saunders
She watches the ice cream pour over the lid of her goblet like cup, looking like a child king’s holy grail. He is picking at his, as someone picked at the table the divorce papers sit on. He has to be fucking Melissa. Everytime she calls his office Oh, Carl is right here, don’t you worry. Of course she isn’t fucking worried. Why would she be worried. Were they fucking in a supply closet, did she have to squeeze her head under a shelf, wedged against a ream of paper while he reamed her, but it couldn’t just start that way, you don’t just slide into someone, this isn’t the spanish soap operas she doesn’t understand every afternoon after work, yet body language is universal, plus she took 5 years of spanish in high school so she gets every other word, did it start with innocent flirting, sex jokes that start tame to test the waters, What’s the difference between snowmen and snowwomen? Snow Balls, advancing to I’d love to go downtown to give you yours, where was their first time, perhaps his office, overlooking the city, but wait, he isn’t a voyeur, but he is lying about her, who knows what he could be lying about. She goes back to that image of them, stuffed in a closet of pens and paper and staplers and sweaty human, maybe he hears people in the next room, that makes him excited, but he didn’t have an adventurous bone in his body, she could see him whining at her to be quite, her big mouth moaning, wanting a reputation, but you couldn’t expect that level of movement and thrusting without knocking items off the shelves, did anything fall on them, she hoped Melissa got clocked with a stapler.
“How long has it been?”
“Three years five months.” She doesn’t have time to ask. “She makes me feel alive. I feel trapped around you. You suck the happiness out of the room, like Wilde said. I actually want to fuck again.” She wonders what is heavier than a stapler, how heavy is a hole punch, or what about one of those cutting boards, do they even make those anymore, what reason would a Social Media Addiction Clinic need one? “It’s not as though we didn’t see this coming, sign the papers.” He taps the surface to an unknown beat, pulling at the curled strands, ripping the pieces apart from each other.
“Does it have to be this way?”
“Yeah it does. You have a week to get your creepy Baby’s First Boo-Boo dolls and taxidermied cats and framed Angus Young used bandaid out, or I’ll throw it out.”
Blend (Moody and Saunders)
The man and the girl are sitting in the seats, the same seats they sat in 12 years ago, what had they been, 17 years old, she falling for him hard, he trying to get a nut, which hadn’t worked that time, or the next five times, to the point that he almost gave up, until she had given him the bang me eyes, the only way he ever knew anyone wanted him, I mean, he wasn’t that attractive, he had gotten some hot girls in his day, some not so much, but she was a sweet score, so much better than his first, who almost turned his stomach off women altogether, as though they were some fine food, Osso Buco and Saffron Risotto or caviar or perhaps even a really good marked up burger from that place they loved hating to go. It’s better than McDonald he had told her, she had agreed, but not by enough, but when they were tired and hungry and angry and wanted a quick bite before they fucked from anywhere between 2 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how he felt, it served it's purpose, like their first time, when he hadn’t been intimate for 3 months 2 weeks 5 days and some change, and he finished before they even started, and she hadn’t laughed, but why would she, it happens, he bet, he can’t be the only one it has happened to. He knew for a fact that it had happened to Roger, he didn’t know for a fact, but he has one of those faces, it’s one of those times when you say you know for a fact because your gut tells you it’s true, like his gut told him when he saw Melissa. That ass, it had him hooked from the moment he laid eyes on it, it had wedged itself around his brain, engulfing his perspective, until that night he had gotten a room in that sleazy motel, where they had almost been afraid to touch the sheets, but he said Don’t worry baby, they definitely wash the sheets, they have to wash the sheets, elsewise what am I paying them for, and she had responded, To smoke weed out back and rotate towels, and they had gone out to his car instead and put the seat down, and right there where he and she had sat looking at the stars the night of their wedding, right there he threw it all away, he found himself. As they sit in those seats he remembers that night when he planed and dreaded this moment, when he thought about their sugary little treats that neither of them wanted, but both of them needed.
