Fiction of the Week: Zipper

Sitting in the plush passenger seat of my Dad’s mauve Dodge van, I leaned out of the open window, cheeks to the wind, inhaling enchilada grease from Don Cuco’s across the street while we waited for the light. There it was--a carousel, a petrified firework. Dad drank Coke from a Styrofoam cup, mostly ice, I judged by the muted garbage disposal sound, as I stared across the street. Cotton Candy. Tilt-a-Whirl. Sea Dragon. You Must Be This Tall to Ride.

Dad wasn’t usually into that sort of thing, but it was Wednesday, our night.

“Can we go?”

He smiled, his cheeks rising to hide tired eyes and shrugged, “Why not?”We flipped a U and parked in the blacktop lot near the ticket booth. Dad sighed and turned off the engine and we headed toward the lights.

“See that one?” Dad said, his eyes set on a tall metal structure with elbow macaroni pods squealing up, over, around the vertical track, and also spinning in circles. “That’s The Zipper. Rode it in high school with Jimmy from across the street. He threw up all over his car,” he was laughing a little now, rays emanating from the corners of his eyes. I loved when Dad told me stories like these. Jimmy, my uncle Dale and Dad used to climb into abandoned cars and rocky caves that hid in the brush hills near their street. They had all sorts of adventures I could only dream about here in suburban sprawl of Simi Valley.

“Ew! Gross!” I shrieked, but kind of intrigued.

“I must have gone on it ten times that night.” Dad’s cheeks glowed orange, his wrinkles smoothed in the flashing lights.

I was scared to go on The Zipper, but Dad convinced me. Seeing him happy made me happy. The metal pod smelled like a doctor’s office. My eyes squeezed, nervous, as I gripped the metal bar, cold and grooved with peeling gray paint. “Woo hoo!” Dad yelled, while I screamed, wanting it to be over soon. I hoped my stomach was stronger than Jimmy’s, keeping my forehead pressed into Dad’s shoulder as we flipped upside down. His Old Spice aftershave made me feel safe.

Almost ten years later Liza and I watched men unload candy-colored metal frames in the dirt lot next to the worn playground, its once red slide turned salmon from sun exposure. As we walked closer, the late-September breeze carried the smell of cold dirt mixed with roasted peanuts, making our hairs sticking up like electricity. The carnival lights burned against the almost navy sky, canceling out the stars.
We were supposed to be studying for our Bio midterm, she reminded me, her muddy eyes hard. Fifteen minutes, I said. Beats another coffee break.

Around us pudgy kids proudly sported ice cream stains and brandished sticky fingers as they dragged their parents from ride to ride. Carnivals. All that work, then pack-em-up by dawn on route to the next town. I had experience with packing, with back-and-forth. Packing life up from one parent to the next. It wasn’t so bad. I liked having everything I needed right with me.

I looked around for the ride I wanted to find. There. “That was my Dad’s favorite growing up,” I said to Liza, pointing to The Zipper, proud to know that fact about him.

“It looks like it’s about to fall apart,” she replied. It did. But I still wanted to go. For Dad.

Liza typically got what she wanted, which meant we didn’t ride it. Instead, we played some games, Tic-Tac-Toe, the Ring Toss, trading dollars for stuffed animals filled with sawdust, the kind my mom warned me were dyed with pee. I held mine gingerly before passing it off to a girl in French braids on the way to Liza’s sedan. The girl smiled and hid behind her mother’s legs.

Fading with each step were the high-pitched carnival screeches. The Zipper-riders laughing in excitement, screaming in terror. Taking what they could from the experience before it packed up and went to the next place.

Fiction of the Week: "Bottle"

Here is the first installment of adding some fiction to the blog. Each short-short piece is based on a word my workshop chooses as a class, in this case, "bottle."

Patiently stoic on the oak slab shelves, reflected in the tempered glass, the bottles waited for her move. She leaned on the onyx bar, letting her elbows soak up other people’s drownings, a film of discarded inhibitions coating the cool marble. Reaching over the inner lip, she grabbed a cocktail napkin, a scratchier relative of cheap toilet paper, to pick at, occupying herself as she decided on a hero.

The cool porcelain Malibu bottle caught her attention first. Smooth in her palms she remembered, like a worn toilet seat. Even Malibu made her submit, her hands pressed where they wouldn’t dare linger if she were sober, making eye contact with her reflection in the dank water as the night’s contents emptied out of her inebriated soul. Mike’s pina coladas. Made expressly in his frat-room blender, with real pineapple juice and fresh kiwi, he promised. Blended, he’d reminded her, not the on-the-rocks shit. Gulping brimming cups of the icy booze one after another like Jamba Juice smoothies, pausing only to ease brain freeze, pushing the heel of her hand into her third eye for relief. They stopped when Mike went away. Cocaine. Gambling. He drank beer now. Bet on baseball instead of himself. She eyed the bottle’s persimmon sun dipping into black horizon lines, taunting the inky squiggles to swallow it whole.

She was onto Jager, a true German--harsh, angular, dark--when a sallow man with pock-marked cheeks tapped her shoulder.

“Buy you a drink, miss?” he propositioned her stereotypically. The bartender’s glasses clinking made her flinch.

Her eyes grazed him like steel wool, masquerading as gentle, before looking away. If only she could decide. Jager was too stern, especially in the morning when the brown liquid turned to goo.

She turned to the man. He couldn’t be younger than forty-three, blonde hair tinged grey, succumbing to age, thinning over the crown of his head. He’d be a monk by fifty. Securing herself to the bar, hand gently cradling chin, she murmured, matching his obviousness, “Whatever you’re having.” She heard him signal to the bartender and order two different drinks as she turned back to the bottles, now rows of anxious seniors taking their class photo.

Crown Royale was New York. A bottle with armor. Late night, B-listers at the Pierre. Interviews conducted that would remain whispered secrets into her Sony tape recorder. The tiny bottle from the gift bag she probably shouldn’t have taken clutched tight to her chest, the underwire of her lace bra breaking skin as she walked to the familiar station. To lazy to wait for a cab, she’d said, waving to the chic, black-clad publicists holding clipboards. Her thin wallet made little indention stuffed the back pocket of her jeans. She drank the bottle on the B line, from Rockefeller to 6th Ave, eying the handful of passengers warily, hoping no one would notice her, but almost wished they would. She was invisible. It stung.

A Vodka-Shirley Temple glided towards her, some kind of projected fantasy. Pink, transparent, bubbly. Weak. The man sipped his quarter-filled glass of muddied rain, cognac or brandy. She never knew the difference. Why didn’t bartenders just use a smaller glass when they weren’t going to use the whole thing?

“Come here often?” A smile lurked beneath the crinkled corners of his eyes, skin making paper accordions. She wanted a screwdriver. Lip-smacking, acidic. Made the nose hairs curl if the bartender made it with Popov instead of Kettle One, she remembered, looking at the clique of vodka in the cool kids’ corner. Bottles ranked by label, price, all as transparent as she was, apparently. Inside throat-scorching liquid dressed up as non-threatening water. “It’s my first time,” she said, allowing the words to float out of her mouth like clouds. The napkin, a shredded white flag in her hands. She guessed she could make five, maybe six, and keeping that in mind, the rest came easily.