Months and Seasons

Months and seasons

by

Christopher Meeks

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

White Whisker Books on Smashwords

Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Meeks

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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Acclaim for Christopher Meeks’s

Months and Seasons and Other Stories:

"The stories in Months and Seasons are like potato chips: you can’t read just one. Just a few sentences into the first piece, Dracula Slinks into the Night, I immediately felt at home in the world Meeks has created."

— Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews

With this collection, Christopher Meeks proves there is an audience for short stories. His characters are well defined with problems that they can't resolve. There are twelve tales that reveal a lot about our present society. Meeks's stories reminded me of those of John Cheever. 

— Gary Roen, The Midwest Book Review

"For those readers fortunate enough to have read Christopher Meeks's first short story collection, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, and discovered the idiosyncrasies of Meeks's writing style and content, rest assured that this new collection, Months and Seasons, not only will not disappoint, but also it will provide further proof that we have a superior writer of the genre in our presence."

— Grady Harp, Top Ten Reviewer, Amazon.com

Full of complete randomness and quirkiness, ingredients I cherish, the stories in this twelve-story collection chronicle the eccentricities of an array of diverse characters, who are dealing with life thrown at them in the only way actually possible: by dealing with their problems, not escaping them.

— Rachel Durfor, Rebecca’s Reads

"I am pleased to report that if Months and Seasons, the new collection from Christopher Meeks, was a music album, many of its twelve pieces would be destined for the charts – no filler here."

— Sam Sattler, Book Chase

"Months and Seasons is a wonderful collection of short stories that reminded me why it is that I enjoy short fiction so much. "

—Rebecca Schinsky, The Book Lady

"Months and Seasons, the second short story collection from Christopher Meeks, is a exceptionally entertaining and thought-provoking offering from a gifted writer. The stories are often curious and clever, while hiding unexpected pockets of wisdom and philosophy."

—Heather Figearo, Raging Bibliomania

"Months and Seasons is very different from the recent collections I reviewed by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sana Krasikov. His characters are quirky and unpredictable and the stories are refreshingly modern. From Halloween parties in L.A. to a summer camp in northern Minnesota, his characters never seem to do the expected thing."

— Lisa Hura, Minds Alive on the Shelves

"Christopher Meeks’s stories are full of people who push through the obstacles of life and overcome their deepest fears in order to find joy in living. Months and Seasons, Meeks’s second collection of short stories, is a delightful book which introduces the reader to characters who are ordinary, but in their ordinariness remind us of the common threads which bind people together."

— Wendy Robards, Caribousmom

This collection shines with humanity and intelligence.

— Meghan Kawka, Medieval Bookworm

…Creates a sense of lightness even in descriptions of difficult moments.

— Adnan Mahmutovic, Under the Midnight Sun

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Contents

THE STORIES

Dracula Slinks Into the Night

The Farms at 93rdand Broadway

Catalina

The Sun is a Billiard Ball

A Shoe Falls

The Holes in My Door

The Old Topanga Incident

A Whisker

Months and Seasons

The Wind Just Right

Breaking Water

The Hand (from The Brightest Moon of the Century)

BOOK MATTER FROM THE PRINT VERSION

Acclaim for This Book and Others by Christopher Meeks

Copyright Information

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Dracula Slinks Into the Night first appeared as an Amazon Short and was reprinted in Rosebud.

The Sun is a Billiard Ball first appeared as an Amazon Short.

The Holes in My Door first appeared as an Amazon Short.

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Other Books by Christopher Meeks

The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea and Other Stories

Who Lives? (A Drama)

The Brightest Moon of the Century (A Novel)

Blood Drama (A Novel)

Love at Absolute Zero (A Novel)

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print ISBN 978-0-6151-8870-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008922108

Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Meeks

First Edition

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means stories in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

To request permission to reprint any portion of the book, e-mail [email protected] and in the subject heading, write the name of the book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meeks, Christopher.

Months and seasons / by Christopher Meeks – 1st ed.

p. cm.

1. United States – Social life and customs – 21st century—Fiction.

PS3613.E374 M53 2008

813.6

Editor, Nomi Isak Kleinmuntz

Book & Cover Design, Daniel Will-Harris, www.will-harris.com

Cover photo by Stefan Hermans, www.perrush.be

Published by White Whisker Books, Los Angeles, 2008

To Ann Pibel

and to the memory

of her mother,

Marie Franco.

Months and Seasons

And Other Stories

by Christopher Meeks

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Dracula Slinks Into The Night

A bright orange envelope came addressed to The Ghouls of the House. I ripped it open to find a card with Diane Arbus’s famous black-and-white photo of twin seven-year-old girls in white tights, prim dresses, and wide headbands standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a thought bubble saying, Hey, Tony! Where’re you goin’? Next to them as part of a collage, actor Tony Perkins dangled keys in front of Hitchcock’s Psycho house and said, To Randolph and Eloise’s Halloween costume party. Inside, the invitation gave the date, address, and time. It was in one month.

I liked parties, but, come on: costume? I was forty-two. Besides, that weekend I would have a big contract to write as well as unfair labor practices to consider. My firm specialized in labor law. Workers were getting screwed in this country with more and more labor going to Mexico, India, and other less-developed countries, and unions were getting bashed. The grocery store clerks, specifically, were renegotiating their contract, and healthcare was a big issue once again. Health was everything.

Also inside the party invitation were the words, Come dance until you drop…dead! I wasn’t in the mood. Of course, my wife Kathleen liked this kind of stuff despite her job, and Eloise was her best friend from work. Kathleen was the administrative assistant to a director of Forest Lawn, a cemetery in Los Angeles. Actually, it was called a memorial park, and a quartet of Forest Lawns dotted Los Angeles like birthmarks. Kathleen’s job included taking on special assignments of a delicate nature brought to the director. She recently had to deal with a set of parents whose son had died from a fall during a wild weekend in Las Vegas, and the parents wanted to harvest sperm from their dead son—for a grandchild. Kathleen had to arrange the rush delivery of the body from Las Vegas to Los Angeles for the sperm harvester. Sperm, Kathleen learned, lived for three or more days after a man’s death, and the parents had already found a surrogate mother—someone willing to open herself to a dead guy. This is why I try not to ask my wife each day how work was. The specifics can give me nightmares.

I heard the garage door open below. Moments later, Kathleen appeared at the top of the stairs, black boots and purple skirt, and she held her thin briefcase and her large black purse as if carrying a load of coal. She looked tired. However, when she saw me, she gave a smile. Her face became a musical rest note. This reminded me of one of the many reasons I loved living with her: she could be cheerful, even under pressure. When she saw the invitation, she said, How fun! You want to go, don’t you? Granted, I was late at the marriage game, having waited until I hit forty, and Kathleen was ten years my junior, closer to youth, but if I knew one thing, it was to proceed with caution in these matters.

That’s a tricky weekend, I said. I’d like to go, but the labor contract will be heating up, and I might even have to meet with the negotiating committee.

Nothing says you have to drink, she said. Her hopefulness made it seem as if the costume party was crucial to our marriage. I saw a twinkle in her eye, and I was as smitten with her now as I had been on our blind date.

It’s not that, I said. You know I like to have fun with you.

I’m starting to wonder. When was the last time you truly let go?

There was Catalina. As I said it, I remembered how even then I’d spent a lot of time on the laptop.

Hugh, was all she replied.

Once I make partner—

Not that again!

It’s important.

So are babies, she said, running her finger around my ear, taking another tack.

There, I fell into it again. Despite my law degree, my skills were no match for Kathleen’s. Soon she might be humming a song and dancing around me. Maybe she’d even sing spontaneously again about her biological time clock. Hey, I wanted kids, but first things first. Quickly I said, Okay, okay. The party sounds fun.

Could you pretend that I’m a jury and you’re trying to persuade me?

I’m sorry, I said. "I’d love to go with you to the costume party."

She looked at me suspiciously. "You’d love to go? And you’ll wear a costume?"

I’ll see what they have at the 99 Cents Store.

She laughed. Figures.

A costume party should cost no more than 99 cents, but I decided not to say that out loud.

The next weekend on a Saturday, we drove to our respective stores in separate cars. I found that while the 99 Cents Store had costumes, they were basically iconographic. A pirate hat made you a pirate. A tiara made you a princess. And, hey, a black cape made you Dracula. I could wear black jeans, a black shirt and shoes, and maybe a little gel in my hair to slick it back. Voila—a fabulous Dracula!

Kathleen returned home an hour after I did with two bags and a huge smile on her face. Want to see? she said.

She pulled out what had been an elegant white wedding gown, but it was full of holes and black streaks as if she had exhumed it at Forest Lawn. The bag also had a bouquet of dead flowers and a grungy garland for her head. Maybe she’d spent less than I had, after all.

She then held the dress in front of her. It was strapless, and bones had been painted on the side to show a fleshless rib cage. This costume wasn’t from a dump. So what are you going to be? I asked.

The Corpse Bride.

I shrugged. I’d never heard of such a thing.

It’s a movie. From her other bag, she pulled out a packet that said, Official Corpse Bride Makeup Kit. It’s approved by Tim Burton, she explained. And it comes with a Burton-approved overskirt train, a wig of yarn twist strands, and everything!

They always jack up the price when there’s a licensing agreement. Dracula, on the other hand, is in the public domain.

She licked her lips sensuously. You shall be in my domain, she commanded with glee and moved her eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.

Yikes. This woman was amazing. I froze, however, when she added, Just have fun. You’ve got to learn to let it go.

Sure, I said, stuck on the thought that my wife saw me as tight. Had I become a workaholic? I could have fun. Not at that moment, however. I had a videoconference to attend shortly.

On the night of the party, I grabbed my new digital camera from the car. It offered a high ASA rating, which meant I could shoot in low light, and there surely would be tricky lighting and unusual people. As we approached the house in Pasadena, we could hear booming music, and as we turned the corner, I stopped, dumbfounded at the sight. Standing in front of the two-story Craftsman home, taller than the structure, was a human skeleton wearing a tall striped hat like the Cat in the Hat. Three fresh graves with headstones rested on the lawn, and one had the inscription of You. A giant 3-D skull twirled at the peak of the house, a projection of a hologram. Music blasted everywhere. Fun, I thought.

Where’s the hologram’s projector? I asked. How did Randolph do that?

I don’t know, Kathleen said, a number of steps away from me. Her long dark-haired wig blended into the darkness, and her pale white makeup made her look ghostly. He’s a genius. Let’s go.

Randolph, Eloise’s husband, worked at JPL and had been an engineer on the Mars Rover missions. When one of the landers had crashed due to a simple miscalculation, he had told us over drinks, Oops.

How do you think he built such a large skeleton? I wondered. Are there kits for this? How does it stand? I tried to look for bracing.

I thought you didn’t like Halloween.

This is an engineering marvel.

Let’s get inside already.

I paused and photographed the scene with wide shots, close-ups, and different angles. When I was finished, I saw Kathleen impatiently waiting with that look on her face.

We entered the house going up a few steps. The front porch had been walled in with bricks since the last time we visited. It was odd there were no windows in it. We walked into the open front door. The living room, devoid of all furniture, was entirely a dance floor, undulating with costumed figures that included winged bats, a white-faced Geisha, a revolutionary soldier, an Egyptian princess with jet-black hair, and a man whose head was inside an aquarium. The aquarium had suspended fish and kelp and an eerie blue light from the top. Against one wall of the living room, a high-definition video projector cast moving abstract imagery like something from the sixties.

The awe I had felt outside vanished. These were adults with too much time on their hands. And didn’t they know that the projector, sound system, and speakers were all Japanese? Their dancing shoes were probably from Mexico or China. America’s jobs were going elsewhere and Americans were just dressing up and playing like kids. Gas prices were high. General Motors was going broke and laying off thousands—and these people were dancing.

Let’s find the hosts, said Kathleen, looking excited.

In the kitchen, we found our friends, a tall slender man and a much shorter woman. Normally she was blond. Howdy, partner! said Eloise, who was dressed as a cowgirl in a white shirt, red hat, chaps, and crimson hair with a matching long fake ponytail. She and Kathleen hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks, even though it had been just hours. Eloise looked me up and down and chose not to