Here I am and now. Tl; dr: story at bottom.
This story is short and ordinary. The song reference is to B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone.
I owe credit to AB on three counts.
First, (in talking about Agatha Christie – specifically how Agatha Christie introduces rapid-fire a cast of seemingly ubiquitous characters), she uttered the perfect line: “He was a father and not much else.”
Obviously that was the beginning of my story right there.
Second, she bought me more Agatha Christie novels, which was a kindness I took to like a drunkard takes to wine.
Third, she gave me the following advice (that she herself got from someone else): to write a story; wait a year; read it, burn it; wait another year; then write it, again, from memory, having located and amplified the grabbiest bits. I replicated this process except I expedited it to four weeks.
Enjoy!! 🙂
PS: the Agatha Christie ranking, of the four I have read this year, is 1) The Moving Finger, 2) Death on the Nile, 3) Peril at End House, 4) The Seven Dials Mystery.
The Moving Finger would be on my list of short perfect novels, if such a list existed.
The other entry to that list would be Lilus Kikus, by Elena Poniatowska, which I had the incredible good fortune to run across in an out-of-the way little library in Richfield just as I was finishing this story. From Poniatowska and also from Stieg Larsson I am learning to be concrete. If my two years at Acorn were for reading science fiction, examining potentials, and what-ifs, my time at Spice House is for plot, intrigue, misdirection, compulsive reading. Excavations.
It is 4pm and I’ve just blown out the writing candle I’ve been burning since 10am. The room is blue with smoke. Outside, where I’m going, it is spring.
cdzhouse 