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thisblogisalsoboundforglory · 4 years ago

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WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

Kage Baker’s Company Series

In the Garden of Iden

Sky Coyote

Mendoza in Hollywood

The Graveyard Game

The Life of the World to Come

The Children of the Company

The Machine's Child

The Sons of Heaven

The Empress of Mars

Not Less than Gods

Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Gods and Pawns

In the Company of Thieves

Ø Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.

Ø Big ideas.

Ø Lots of adventure, some action.

Ø Small doses of humor.

Neil Gaiman

Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)

Neverwhere

Stardust

American Gods

Anansi Boys

The Graveyard Book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Ø Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.

Ø Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.

Ø Adventure happens whether you like it or not.

Ø Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.

Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series

Firewatch

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)

Blackout/All Clear

Assorted:

The Last of the Winnebagos

Ø Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.

Ø One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?

Ø Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.

Ø I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)

Cryptonomicon

Anathem

Seveneves

Ø Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.

Ø Big. Fucking. Ideas.

Ø Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?

Ø Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.

Christopher Moore

Pine Cove Series:

Practical Demonkeeping

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)

Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)

Death Merchant Chronicles:

A Dirty Job

Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)

Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)

Shakespeare Series:

Fool

The Serpent of Venice

Shakespeare for Squirrels

Assorted:

Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)

Sacre Bleu

Noir

Ø Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.

Ø No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.

Ø Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.

Ø Nonstop funny from beginning to end.

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

The Furthest Station

Lies Sleeping

The October Man

False Value

Tales From the Folly

Ø Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.

Ø These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.

Ø Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.

Ø Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.

John Scalzi

Old Man’s War Series:

Old Man’s War

Questions for a Soldier

The Ghost Brigades

The Sagan Diary

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

After the Coup

The Human Division

The End of All Things

Ø Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.

Ø The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.

Ø Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.

Ø It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.

Assorted:

The Dispatcher

Murder by Other Means

Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)

Ø Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.

Ø What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.

Ø Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.

Ø Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.

David Wong/Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End

This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

What the Hell Did I Just Read?

Ø Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.

Ø Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.

Ø Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.

Ø Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.

Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The Very First Damned Thing

A Symphony of Echoes

When a Child is Born*

A Second Chance

Roman Holiday*

A Trail Through Time

Christmas Present*

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*

Lies, Damned Lies and History

The Great St Mary’s Day Out*

My Name is Markham*

And the Rest is History

A Perfect Storm*

Christmas Past*

An Argumentation of Historians

The Battersea Barricades*

The Steam Pump Jump*

And Now for Something Completely Different*

Hope for the Best

When Did You Last See Your Father?*

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*

Plan For The Worst

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

Ø The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.

Ø The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.

Ø Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!

Ø Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.

Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Letter of Mary

The Moor

Jerusalem

Justice Hall

The Game

Locked Rooms

The Language of Bees

The God of the Hive

Beekeeping for Beginners

Pirate King

Garment of Shadows

Dreaming Spies

The Marriage of Mary Russell

The Murder of Mary Russell

Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense

Island of the Mad

Riviera Gold

The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)

Ø Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.

Ø Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.

Ø If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.

Ø Amusement is afoot.

Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Ø In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.

Ø Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.

Ø Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.

Ø This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.

Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Thud!

Snuff

Raising Steam

Ø If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.

Ø Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear

Ø The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.

Ø Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.

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pjbehindthesun · 7 years ago

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chapter 10: asleep, awake, asleep

Wednesday, October 10th, 1990

My eyes fly open and I sit bolt upright, flinging the covers forward, blood hammering in my ears. This is my routine now. Every morning, before sunrise, my brain screams me awake, my autonomic nervous system in overdrive: what the fuck do you think you’re doing, you think you have time to sleep, with all the work you have to do? get up get up GET UP

I take a shaky breath and check the clock on my nightstand. Well, shit, it’s almost 6:00, which is better than I’ve been able to do in a while. Alex isn’t in the bed with me anymore. I’d woken up a few times last night, like I usually do, and this time I spent the quiet hours watching him sleep, analyzing all the familiar lines and angles of his face. It’s hard to articulate this feeling I get when I look at him now. I missed him when I was away. Of course I did. We have our problems, our rifts, our differences, the things we’ve said along the way and can’t take back. But we’ve also spent years together, breaking this love in, taking for granted that the other person is always here. Which is why my chest hurts so much when I remember last night, when I realize that he didn’t even register my absence. Maybe we’re taking different things for granted. Maybe there’s not much to come home to anymore.

There are mysterious smells and noises coming down the hallway, so I toss on one of his old t-shirts and go out to see what he’s up to, bracing myself for what’s sure to be an ugly talk. But I find him in our tiny kitchen with his back to me, cooking breakfast in his work clothes, and to my great amusement, I notice he’s got one of the little aprons I sewed tied on over his slacks. The little blue gingham one with the ruffled hem and the red tulip patch on the pocket. He’s got a half dozen sad-looking red roses on our coffee table, perking up in some water in the giant filtration flask I’d stolen from the lab to use as a vase for all the times Lucy randomly drops off flowers.

I can’t remember the last time he cooked. Or bought me flowers. I stand as still as a statue, unwilling to disturb the scene just in case it’s a dream, just in case I’m still asleep and really about to wake up to the same old shit. If that happens, I want to remember this moment where I know what it feels like to be cared for.

He turns around with a frying pan full of pancakes in his hand and nearly drops it.

“You’re sneaky, C,” he jokes with a cocked eyebrow, “I’m not done yet.” He nods at the table, which is set for breakfast in the loosest possible interpretation of the word “set.”

“Let me help,” I say as I squeeze behind him to grab some glasses. Jesus fuck, the kitchen’s a disaster, but I can’t stop grinning.

He sets the pan down and wraps his arms around me, peppering little kisses over my nose and cheeks as he says, “you’ll do no such thing. You’ll sit and have coffee until I’m done ravaging our kitchen, and then you’ll eat pancakes while I clean up this fucking mess.”

“You had me at coffee,” I give him one more kiss before twisting out of his grip to steal the mug on the counter, curling up on the couch to enjoy the spectacle. “Carry on.”

As he clatters around in the kitchen, I brush the rose petals with my fingertips. “And just when and where did you get these?”

“Huh?” he turns around from his work of mutilating oranges on my grandma’s little blue Depression glass juicer. “Oh, down at the convenience store, before you woke up. Sorry, I tried to pick the least dismal ones they had.”

I smile into my coffee once he turns around, in spite of myself. Shit, he’s really trying. Maybe we don’t even need to talk about it now. Maybe we both just needed the night to sleep on it, to process things and come back around to one another. I watch him sow chaos, burning his finger here, almost dropping a glass there, cursing as he tries to fish tiny eggshell fragments out of the bowl. It’s a ridiculous, over-the-top gesture, sure. But Alex isn’t usually the gesture type. Alex is usually the frowny, sardonic, superiority complex type who sneers at stereotypically romantic shit like this. And I guess I am, too, except that when the real connection feels like it’s evaporating before your eyes, sometimes these big, overdramatic, silly shows of affection are all you have. I have no idea what brought on this flood of sentimentality, but I’ll take it. It’s enough. It has to be.

With a flourish, he pulls a chair away from the table and gestures for me to come over. I smile as I survey the damage: there are seeds floating in the orange juice, the toast looks like something that fell off the space shuttle, the pancakes look dense enough to break a tooth, and the scrambled eggs look like rubbery choking hazards, but it all looks like the work of someone who loves me and tried his hardest to make a broken thing whole again.

“Guess I oughta withdraw my application to Le Cordon Bleu,” he chuckles, ruffling his hair in that way that has always killed me, ever since that night we met.

“Yeah, I’d really rather you hang around here and try to poison me instead. Alex, this is… this is wonderful.”

With nothing more than a rueful expression to offer me, he pulls me into a hug. I bury my head in his chest. Please, don’t let this fade again.

We sit down and get to work on his breakfast, which is borderline inedible but we manage to persevere thanks to the fortification of another pot of strong coffee. I fill him in on the gossip from back home and he listens quietly, stroking the back of my hand. By the time we’ve cleared our plates, I’m beginning to feel like maybe it won’t fade after all, and I help him with the washing up even though he insists he’s got it. (More than anything, I’m just afraid for the well-being of my favorite dishes.) After I send him off to work with a kiss – sort of a chaste, 50s housewife, sepia-tone version of our usual, because even though I’m feeling better about everything this morning, it’s all I can manage – I sit back down on our couch, contemplating the roses. I know I’m supposed to make two phone calls, but I’m only going to make one.

***

“Ahh, hey!”

My first waking moment of the day, and I’m crying out in surprise as Jeff lunges over me like some kind of enraged mythical sea monster to smack my alarm clock so hard that it jostles off the table, partially crushing me in the process. Then, muttering something barely intelligible about “that’s what you get, rude motherfucker… not you, obviously…” he sinks back to his original position, the way we’d been all night, curled up together with his arms locked around me. He buries his nose back in the crook of my neck, his warm breath sending a wave of the best kind of goosebumps down my spine, and I let myself drift back against him, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Waking up next to him always fills me with the purest sense of peace. I mean, as peaceful as a person can possibly feel after the vicious assault of an alarm clock. When he doesn’t have to wake up for one of those insanely early shifts at Raison D’Etre, he’s emphatically not a morning person, and it’s almost impossible to kick him out of my bed and get to work on time. But his grumpiness is so cute that I don’t even mind the struggle.

“Morning, sunshine,” I laugh, trying to twist around to face him but getting locked into an even tighter grip by the sea monster. A gravelly rumble is all I hear in response. I somehow manage to squirm around anyway, and he grumbles again, I assume in general approval.

“Je-effff,” I singsong, nuzzling his nose. “It’s quarter of, I need to get in the shower…”

“Noooo, why would you do that, you smell fuckin amazing,” he mutters, brushing his lips against mine for a soft, scratchy kiss.

“I mean, at this point I probably just smell like you.”

“Yeah… isn’t that fucking amazing?” he whispers between kisses.

“Be that as it may, it’s frowned upon to show up to a professional workplace smelling of sex and bassist,” I whisper back. “Shower with me?”

Well, that woke him up. His eyes fly open and he rolls me onto my back, grinning as he props himself up over me. “I’m not even sure what’s worse, the fact that my girlfriend just told me I stink or the fact that I don’t even care if it means I get to see her all naked and wet…”

“You’re such an easy mark,” I duck under his outstretched arm and make my escape, dodging the pillows he’s throwing at me.

We manage to behave enough in the shower to actually get measurably cleaner, and I’m ready for work with time to kill. Just as we’re putting coffee mugs in the sink, though, my phone rings. Jeff gets there first. It kind of feels like someone inflates a little balloon in my chest every time he does something like answer the phone in my place. Like it’s his place. Ours.

“Hello?” Whatever he hears in response dissolves his neutral expression into an exasperated shake of his head, although he’s smiling. “Yeah, maybe I do live here now, what’s it to you?”

That balloon puffs up a tiny bit more, although now I’m trying to get his attention so I can find out who’s calling me.

“Cora,” he explains as he hands the receiver over to me. Shit, I’d gotten so wrapped up in Jeff that I’d forgotten she was supposed to call me. My stomach flips as I wonder all over again what happened when she got home last night.

“Got yourself a concierge, huh Luce?” Her voice is the same as always, nonchalant and vaguely amused, like the smirk refuses to stay confined on her face and has to express itself in her tone. That doesn’t mean anything, though, Cora’s the queen of deflection.

“Hey, how’d it go?” I ask her, shooting a loaded look at Jeff, who understands instantly and sits on my couch to start pulling on his sneakers so we can go.

“Good, good… you got a sec before work, you wanna come up?”

“Yeah, be right up.” I hang up, knowing that if she actually wants to talk about it, it isn't the worst case scenario, but it can’t be that good either.

“So?” Jeff asks. “The fuck do you think happened?”

“I have no clue, genuinely.”

“I don’t know, she sounded pretty normal on the phone. I mean, normal for her.”

“Yeah,” I’m unconvinced, although I have to chuckle at his qualifier. Jeff doesn’t exactly get Cora. If the worst really happened, there’s no way she would call. This is her trying to convince me, and by extension herself, that whatever it is, it’s fine.

Outside Cora’s door, before I can knock, Jeff pulls me into his arms and rocks us back and forth a bit, turning us slowly in a circle, like middle schoolers at a dance.

“So, I need to go make sure my singer survived the night, but you girls have a good talk, and, uhm,” he puts his lips to my ear and drops his voice, to that whisper that scrapes down low, “come to rehearsal later?”

“Hey, Lucy, you have a bassist on your face,” Cora’s voice taunts, and when I pull back from Jeff I see her mischievous grin. Ha shit, I didn’t even hear her open the door.

“Hadn’t noticed,” I sneer.

“Yeah, well, the longer it’s there, the less you notice it. You’re acclimated now.”

“Meh, I think I’ll keep it,” I squint at Jeff in appraisal.

“Pretty sure I’m not cancerous,” he chuckles. “You two have fun, and get your asses to come hear us play tonight, okay? Cora, you know Stone’s gonna have a fit if you don’t.”

“Stone’s gonna have a fit no matter what anyone does, it’s an immutable Law of Stonerism, like the law of conservation of bitchiness,” she retorts with a wicked grin.

“You’re not wrong,” Jeff says before giving me a kiss on the cheek and heading back to his apartment. I follow Cora inside, and the first thing I lay eyes on explains what happened last night better than anything she could tell me. She’s not rushing to say anything, though, so I wait until we’ve got cups of coffee and are sitting on her couch before I broach the subject.

“Roses, huh?”

She beams at the flowers on the table. “Yeah. Isn’t that cute?”

I can’t stop myself from smiling, but it’s more a reflex than anything else. The most socially acceptable expression of my shock. “But… you hate roses. The cliche…”

“Check.”

“…the cheese factor…”

“Present.”

“…the whole religious undertone…”

“Perennially gross.”

“Points for botanically correct punning. And the environmental impact??”

“Ghastly. But, like, he bought me flowers, Lucy.”

“Yes, I can see that. Your absolute least favorite thing, how fucking romantic.”

“No, I mean… Alex, Alex bought flowers. I don’t need to understand anything else about what happened last night, Lucy. I know exactly how sorry he is, if he woke up freakishly early to root through sad mini-mart roses –” I cringe and don’t even bother hiding it, which earns me a couch pillow to the side of the head “– just to show me how much I actually mean to him.”

That, or you’re so hard up for any signs of life in this relationship that even sad mini-mart roses are an appropriate apology for forgetting all about your existence. But I can’t say that to her. I’ve never been able to say shit like that to her. I’m all for our friendship being based on honesty, but what happens if you criticize a friend’s relationship? If they break up, what then? You’re the meddling asshole who helped contribute to your friend’s misery. And even worse, if they don’t break up, then you’ve established that you don’t like who they’re dating, and everything gets so awkward! I can’t do that with Cora. I don’t pretend to understand what she sees in Alex and I think he’s pretty awful to her, but she’s too important to me to alienate over a fucking boy.

“Yeah, it’s definitely out of character for him, he must have really been shaken up,” is all the diplomacy I can manage.

“The poor guy, he had it written down right but just remembered it wrong,” she explains, “and I mean, I was hurt, but everybody makes mistakes, right?”

“Well, right,” I say slowly, picking my words, “but that’s a pretty big one, didn’t you guys talk about your flight on the phone while you were gone?”

She bites her lips in, staring at the roses again. “Yeah, but like, a couple days before I got back, so it’s not like it was fresh in his mind.”

“No, that’s true.” She’s looking for anything small to excuse it, to make it better. She doesn’t even look like she wants to talk about it with me but she knows I’d have killed her if she didn’t call. Maybe the kindest thing I can do is just to let her have whatever illusion those roses are projecting on her eyes.

“So, are you gonna come see the guys tonight or what? Jeff was right, Stone didn’t shut up about you while you were gone, I think he really wants your opinion on their new stuff. He’s really been putting Eddie through his paces.”

At Stone’s name she rolls her eyes and smiles, which at this point is like a Pavlovian response that either one of them has been conditioned to give when you mention the other. “Oh, the chairman of the board. I bet he’s been impossible. But even he’s gonna have a hard time keeping up with Eddie, I think.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you listened to the guy talk?”

“I mean, yeah, but it’s not like he says much. I couldn’t get two words out of him!”

She shakes her head at me. “He wasn’t very talkative with me either, unless we were talking about music. Or surfing. Then he lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. He was all about getting back to work as soon as possible, sleeping at the practice space… I think Stone’s got his hands full!”

“Well, anyway, you’d better prevent World War III and come hear them sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah…” she says slowly, wrinkling her nose. “I’d like to, but I’ve got so much shit to catch up on. Before my trip, my advisor gave me this list as long as my arm of follow-up experiments he wants me to run, and I’ve got this fucking grant proposal due soon… I should probably make some headway on that…”

“What’s a couple of hours? You won’t solve the world’s problems tonight, come play!”

“Luce…” her expression’s genuinely strained as she fixates on all the work she has to do. I know that look. And unless someone’s opened a Seattle chapter of Overachievers Anonymous, there’s no talking her out of it. I just sigh as I get up to put my mug in the sink.

“Okay, okay. Well, maybe this weekend?”

***

Friday, October 12th, 1990

“Cyclops again? Man, Stone, I wanted to go to Mama’s,” Jeff complains, but I’m not having it. Cora’s working tonight and she’s been a ghost since she got home. And I only know like thirdhand what happened with Alex that night, because Lucy told Jeff and he finally knuckled under and told me after I harassed him enough. I mean, Cora doesn’t owe me an explanation, it’s her life. And I feel so pathetic trying to run into her like this just to talk to her about it, but… she told me she’d call.

“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit,” Mike scolds Jeff as we bend our path towards Cyclops, and earns himself a headlock from the bassist. Luckily Eddie’s pretty flexible and doesn’t give a shit, and Dave’s got a pregnant girlfriend at home so it’s not like he’s hanging around all that much outside of playing, so there’s no one else to convince. We get to the cafe and she’s nowhere to be seen. She’s probably in the back. Luckily we’re here often enough that Emily knows to seat us in Cora’s section, and we grab our usual booth while we wait. Eddie pulls out that little notebook of his he’s always writing in, and Mike and Jeff are debating some basketball game that I honestly couldn’t give a shit about, so it gives me an excuse to look around for Cora without getting made fun of by anyone.

Where the hell is she? This place is the size of a shoebox, but it’s got all these little side alleys and bad sight lines and dim lighting, so I’m trying not to crane my neck too obviously but I can’t find her anywhere. I’m just resigning to my fate of learning something about sports when I notice with a jolt that a pretty, redheaded girl just wandered out of the kitchen and stopped at the till behind the bar.

She’s got her back to us while she works, so I take the opportunity before she spots us to study all the little details I’ve been missing so much. The way her hair always looks like it’s a darker shade of red when she wears it piled up in a bun like that. The wisp that inevitably escapes and falls across her forehead and into her eyes, making her unconsciously sweep it back (while I always have to fight the urge to do it for her, because speaking from experience I know she’d just punch me if I tried). The little baby hairs at the nape of her neck, which never stay up in a ponytail and somehow look even softer than the rest of it. As usual, she’s got those little brass earrings in, the tiny little stars she always wears. And that big, chunky dark green sweater, the one she has to roll the cuffs of twice in order to be able to do anything with her hands. I can’t see much else until she comes out from behind the bar and walks over to us with a smile. Oh, hell, she’s wearing that skirt. Cora doesn’t wear skirts a lot and she only owns two, as far as I can tell, but this one’s my favorite. It’s black, and tight, and stops just above her knees. The fabric looks sort of stretchy. I don’t even try to stop my mind from imagining how it would feel to bunch it up in my fists as I kiss her, reach down and slowly work it upwards, slide my hands up underneath it and over her soft skin to pick her up and set her on the counter, wrap her legs around my back, and…

“Helloooo, earth to Stoner,” she calls, and I’m ripped out of that gorgeous dream to see her staring at me with eyebrows raised. I guess I’ve been writing my cheesy bodice ripper in my mind long enough for everyone else to have ordered their dinner? “I asked you what you want?”

Oh. Well, I want to make you scream my name, but I doubt that’s what you’re asking. Think. Think!

“Cheeseburger?” the word comes out sounding like I’m a non-native speaker who’s never heard it before and is asking someone to confirm the pronunciation.

“Are you asking me or ordering me?”

Damn it, woman, that’s a whole other fantasy.

“No, uh, yeah, I’ll have a cheeseburger.”

“Welcome back,” she says dryly, jotting it down on her notepad with a little smirk. Jesus, I’ve been missing her and worrying about her so much lately that I don’t even know how to keep a grip on reality when I finally get to be around her. Like I’d gotten so comfortable with the dream of Cora that I don’t even know how to act normal around the real one anymore.

Speaking of the real one, she looks tired. I’ve already stared at her like a creep enough for one night, but I can’t help noticing she’s got big dark circles under her eyes. And she looks pale. I mean, pale even for her. She’s still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, but she looks so worn out. What the fuck has happened to her this week?

“Speaking of welcome back,” Mike shouts, “where ya been, Cora? We miss you at practice, we thought Lucy would drag you out the other night.”

“Yeah,” she hedges, “but I’ve got all this work I have to get done…”

“Typical mad scientist shit, huh?” and she and Mike share a grin. Eddie suddenly rips his gaze from the page he’s been tattooing and frowns at Cora.

“Wh-, what does that mean, I thought you worked here?”

“Well, I do,” she explains, tugging her apron, “but this is a part-time gig, the real job is grad school.”

“Whoa, really?” he’s still scowling.

“Yep. Mild-mannered waitress by day, mad scientist by night… or is it the other way around…”

“You’re about as mild-mannered as a rabid badger, Red,” I break into their conversation, just wanting her to look at me again so I can study her face some more. “OW!” She kicks me hard in the shins and gives me a saccharine smile.

“Well, if I want to keep working here, I need to get back to it,” she says.

“Yes, comely bar wench, fetch us some ale and – OWWW!” Now I’m just asking for it. At least she’s wearing Converse today and not the Docs.

“Dude, you’re such a fuckin moron,” Jeff shakes his head at me as Cora walks away to put in our orders. Eddie’s eyes immediately drop back to his notebook. I’ve already learned during this short visit that if he’s writing, I don’t want to interrupt, because he comes up with some incredibly good shit. All of our old Love Bone songs sound so totally different with the kinds of lyrics he’s putting over the top of them, so much harder-edged.

“So!” Jeff claps and rubs his hands together. “Hoops, mañana?”

“Si, señor,” Mike agrees in an exaggerated accent.

“Y tu tambien, Eddie?”

“Absolutely, yeah!” He looks up from his writing excitedly and the three of them start scheming about a game of pickup. “What about you, Stone?”

Jeff snorts and I shoot him a glare before explaining to Ed, “I personally don’t play.”

“Yeah, if you saw him try, you’d know why… OW!”

“That’s right motherfucker, now it’s my turn to kick people in the shins!”

“Pretty macho for a cheerleader…” We spend the rest of dinner bickering and making plans for practice and, yes, basketball for the weekend, but I’ve got one eye on Cora the whole time. No, really, both eyes. I really don’t have the attention span for much of anything else. I don’t think anybody else has noticed how exhausted she looks. I mean, Eddie wouldn’t know the difference, he’s known her for five minutes, but the other two stooges are so distracted about some random dude on the New Jersey Nets with a ridiculous name to pay her any mind. And she’s putting on a good show, but something’s not right. I just wish I could get her alone for five minutes and talk…

I climb out of the booth and walk up to the bar, where she’s pouring some beers for another table.

“Hey, uhm, I was kidding about the wench part, you know, I didn’t mean to…”

She glances up at me with those big, warm brown eyes I’d missed so much. “You’re getting squishy on me, Stone, you know I don’t take anything you say seriously.”

I bite back a grin. There’s my girl. “Yeah, maybe I’ll just change my name. Uhm, Marshmallow’s got a good ring to it. Marshmallow Gossard?”

“Honestly if you’re starting from Stone, it’s not like it can get any worse.”

“Hey, can we talk?” I blurt out, interrupting her laughter. Her eyebrows draw together.

“What are we doing now, communicating telepathically?”

“No, wiseass, just – can you take a break for a second?”

“Uhm, yeah, let me just…” she nods at the tray of glasses, and I step back to let her out so she can take them to a table before coming back over and pulling off her apron.

“Colleen, back in five?” she calls to her boss inside the kitchen, holding up a pack of cigarettes she’s pulled from her bag below the counter.

“What gives? You don’t smoke unless you’re drinking… you drunk on the job, Red?”

“No, this is just the only way I can get away with taking an unscheduled break. Honestly, I gotta find a new sidekick, I can’t keep explaining all my evil plans to you like some entry level henchman,” she pokes me in the ribs, shoving me toward the back door.

“So what the hell, Cora?” I burst out as soon as we’re alone in the alley, feeling my patience with this night and her and her stupid boyfriend evaporate all at once.

“Excuse me?” A dangerous look glints in her eyes. Whoops, came out of the gate a little strong, I need to stay calm or I’m never going to get her to tell me what happened.

“Sorry, just… what happened to you the other night, I thought you were gonna call…”

“So?” she frowns at me, then fiddles with the pack of cigarettes she obviously has no intention of smoking. “What does it even matter, Stone? It’s fine.”

“‘What does it matter?’ Are you fucking kidding me?” So much for calm. “What the fuck happened?”

“You’re gonna pretend like you don’t know?” she bristles back. “Come on, I’m sure Lucy told you guys the whole deal.”

“Well… no, I mean, she told Jeff a little, she said you guys made up or something, but she also said it’s not her story to tell, so –”

“She’s right!” Her anger flashes and I take a step back in shock. “And it’s not your story to fucking extract, so why are you so hard pressed to hear it? It sucks, okay? Is that what you want to know? That I told her everything’s fine but it fucking sucks? You want notarized confirmation that my relationship’s shit, Stone? How can it be anything else, if my boyfriend can’t even remember to pick me up at the airport?”

“I…” does she not know? Does she still just think he forgot her because he’s forgetful, and not because he’s banging other girls? Did that asshole get away with it?

“You want me to spill my guts and tell you how it feels? You want to fix it for me? Sure, fucking fix it, be my fucking guest, I don’t even have the time to think about it anymore because I’ve got so much goddamn work to do, so I’m just trying to fucking forget and get on with it. But if you’re going to insist on reminding me, you’d better have something helpful to say.”

As she stares me down, I feel like a bug stuck on a pin. Do I tell her? If I tell her now, she’s going to wonder why I didn’t tell her in the first place and she’s going to hate me for allowing her to make up with him. If I don’t tell her, though, what if he keeps cheating, how can I let this get any worse? God, what a fucking nightmare, how did it get this way?

“That’s what I thought,” she sighs after a moment, whirling around and going back inside to leave me out here alone.

#behind the sun #chapter 10 #fanfiction #fanfic #jeff ament #stone gossard #eddie vedder #mike mccready #pearl jam

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