#26 New Fiction and Old Friends
Hello. Welcome to the 26th Notes From Table 30, my monthly newsletter where I talk about…well, whatever I want to talk about.
This was a rough month for me. I just finished my fourth residency at Goddard College for my MFA in Creative Writing. I made new friends, reconnected with old ones, wrote a few new things (read one of them at the end of this newsletter), met with my advisor, and got ready to finish my thesis. Unfortunately, like last semester this one was 100% virtual instead of being on campus at Fort Worden. I understand that the pandemic makes this the only sensible choice, but that doesn’t change the fact that what could have been life changing and incredible was only adequate.
In my previous semester I taught a eight-hour class on outlining. Part of the program was writing a teaching essay about my experience. That essay is now available online. You can read it at this link.
This month has been full of mixed emotions for me as the elation of reconnecting with my Goddard family was tempered by the loss of a close friend. I met Kristopher ‘Sonics Guy’ Brannon back in high school. In recent months he was one of the only friends I saw in person during the pandemic. We talked online nearly every day for the past few years. His sudden death has shocked me. I’m still processing it. You can learn more about Kris in an article I wrote for Grit City Magazine.
What I’m Watching
Here are some highlights of my February viewing activities.
Irresistible
Jon Stewart is sorely missed since leaving his legendary run on The Daily Show, but he’s still working behind the camera as a director. His latest is a little movie on Amazon called Irresistible starring Steve Carell as a Democratic operative who sees an opportunity to court rural voters by pressganging an outspoken Midwestern yokel (Chris Cooper) into running for mayor of a small town. It’s fun, funny, and informative. In other words, if you’re looking for a Jon Stewart fix, here it is.
Painting With John
Back in the early 1990s musician, actor, and all around weirdo, John Lurie convinced a group of Japanese investors that he was an expert fisherman with contacts to celebrities in order to get funding to do a fishing television show. Only one of those things was true. He managed to film six episodes with the likes of Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, Tom Waits, and others before they cut his funding. The result was the cult classic television show, Fishing With John. It’s honestly one of my favorite shows ever.
So when I learned that John Lurie was doing Painting With John on HBO Max, I wasn’t sure what to think. Painting With John is every bit as weird and fun as Fishing With John, but it’s lacking the travel, the celebrities, and the incredible narrator. Instead, each episode is basically just John hanging out at his house on a small Caribbean island telling stories while he paints. Prints of the paintings are available to purchase for $500-$2,000. I don’t know that I’d recommend doing that, but I do recommend the show, especially if you were a fan of his first show. The sixth and final episode of Painting With John airs on Friday. I don’t expect a season two.
Promising Young Woman
I watched this knowing absolutely nothing about it except that a few of my female friends had told me that they loved it. I’ve since looked at various acclaim and criticism of the movie (and criticism of the criticism of the movie) and hope I can avoid most of the social landmines by simply saying that Carey Mulligan is fantastic as the protagonist in what is pretty much a gender-flopped standard revenge flick with trappings of toxic masculinity, rape culture, and consent issues sprinkled throughout. I really enjoyed the hell out of it, but then again I like revenge flicks. I don’t think it’s redefined the genre or fails to REALLY be subversive enough. I think it’s good. It doesn’t have to be much more than that.
The Little Things
It’s a well known secret that writer/director John Lee Hancock’s screenplay for The Little Things has been bouncing around Hollywood for thirty years. In fact, it’s a screenplay that spent so long in ‘development hell’ that it started out as a contemporary crime procedural and became a period piece. Taking place in the early 1990s, The Little Things follows disgraced a LAPD Detective turned small town Sheriff played by Denzel Washington as he returns to his old stomping grounds and helps new hotshot detective played by Rami Malek as they investigate a series of murders and focus in on a creepy suspect played by creepy Jared Leto. This movie has a twist that was probably innovative in the 1990s, but now feels a little empty. Personally I had no problem with it. It’s a solid crime movie that is elevated by fantastic acting with an ending that is slightly unsatisfying (and far from conclusive if one takes any time at all to think about it).
What I’m Writing
As mentioned above, I just finished my residency at Goddard. During that week I worked on a piece that I wrote the first draft of a few years ago. Here’s the new version. It has graphic violence in it. You’ve been warned.
Neil’s Trip
by Jack Cameron
NOW
Neil gets the call around 3am on his landline. It’s Gretchen. Of course it’s Gretchen. He stares at the caller ID readout and picks up on the fourth ring. She starts talking before he can make a sound.
“Neil, baby. I screwed up real bad. I had everything going fine and then this stupid kid tries to blackmail me and the next thing I know I’m dumping his body on the side of the road like some goddamn amateur. I need your help.”
Neil gets some more information from her, jots down the details, and tells Gretchen to calm down and that it’ll be alright and that he’ll fix everything. He hangs up and yells, “FUCK!” loud enough for the neighbors to hear him.
THEN
The first time Neil saw Gretchen, he was not in love. Gretchen was stunning but not in the knockout-bombshell way. She was more stunning in the what-am-I-looking-at sort of way. Gretchen was six feet tall and over 300 pounds. There was not one straight line to her body. Her hair was shoulder length and the color of a fire engine in summer. To Neil, she looked like a proper Amazon goddess, big, powerful, and otherworldly.
Neil didn’t mind that she was big. He was on the heavy side himself and certainly wouldn’t be confused for Brad Pitt. If anything he sort of looked like Norm from Cheers, a friendly drunk with the body of a potato.
That first night, he’d shown up to an apartment with his kit. Gretchen was wearing a coat that was way too small for her and smoking a cigarette. All of her clothes fit so tightly that it appeared as if she’d swollen to that size at some point during the evening.
She said, “Are you the guy?”
“Yes. How many?”
“Three. The two in here and there’s one in the kitchen. He’s got a cleaver in his neck.”
“Is anyone else coming here tonight that you know of?”
“No.”
“Good. Go to the laundry room, find a bottle of bleach and bring it into the bathroom. If there is more than one bottle, bring them. Also trash bags. We’ll need those.”
Neil ignored the dead man and woman in the living room for the moment and went into the kitchen. The blinds were up. He shut them, rolling his eyes. Sure enough, the man in the kitchen had a cleaver in his neck. He looked to be in his 30s. He was dressed in a tank-top and jeans. Whoever had wielded the cleaver had some strength. It was wedged in there pretty good.
Neil dragged Mr. Cleaver into the bathroom. He plugged the drain. He stripped him of his clothing and got him in the tub. Then he pulled out the cleaver. There was more than a little blood. He grabbed the scalpel from his kit and cut deep diagonal incisions on each thigh. He then performed CPR on the victim to get the blood pumping out. He glanced around and saw that she left two bottles of bleach. He dumped most of one into the tub to mix with the other bodily fluids. He pulled the plug on the drain, reached in his kit and found some sandalwood incense. It wouldn’t mask the smell, but it would relax him while he worked. It was going to be a long night.
Once the bodies were drained of blood, he got out the hammer, the knives, and the hand held torch. He’d done this enough that there was a bit of a routine to it. The routine made it easier to ignore the fact that a few hours ago these things were alive. The routine was simple, but time consuming: Drain the blood, smash the teeth, burn the fingerprints, hammer the joints, and cut into a minimum of six pieces. Put those pieces in bleach soaked plastic bags, toss them in a freezer for a while, and bury random pieces in random secluded places. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t nice. But it paid extremely well.
NOW
Four years later and he’s in Tacoma because Gretchen had asked him to come. He swore he wouldn’t do this. And of course, Gretchen has left a mess. She already dumped the body outdoors in a public place. He drives by the scene and finds the police are there. This is pointless. There’s nothing to be done. Why is he even here?
THEN
It was almost daylight when Neil was done. Given the circumstances, things had gone amazingly well. Gretchen asked if she could take him out for a drink. He normally did nothing with clients beyond the work, but in this case he made an exception.
The sex they had that morning was sloppy and unfulfilling. It was the sort of drunk sex you have because you’d rather regret doing something.
Over the next two and half years, they fell into a pattern. He’d get the call. She’d be there with some former people. He cleaned it up. They’d get drunk and have adequate sex. And then there was Portland.
NOW
He calls Gretchen’s phone. No answer. He doesn’t leave a voicemail. He finds a downtown bar. Some place called the Swiss. He took a trip to Switzerland once. Nothing about the place screams Swiss. He drinks two beers and thinks about checking out the LeMay Car Museum. It just opened up over the summer and Neil is a bit of a gearhead. He might as well get something out of the trip north.
His phone buzzes. A text from his handler. Just an address. He plugs it into his navigation app. Just across the Narrows Bridge. A place called Gig Harbor.
THEN
Gretchen called him on his home number. Normally Gretchen didn’t call at all. There was a handler who made the call to a burner phone that Neil replaced every three weeks. His home number was unlisted and rarely rang at all. Gretchen gave him the address in Portland. It was a single. Some guy in his 50s. It took just under three hours to break him down. When he was done, he asked her why the handler didn’t call.
“This wasn’t a job, Neil. This was just me.”
Neil looked at her.
“What do you mean ‘just you’?” Neil said.
“I killed him. I needed your help. So I called.”
“What about my payment?”
“How about I just work it off for you?”
“And how might you do that? I don’t need anyone expired.”
“Well, there are other things I do that I know you like…”
She smiled at him. He didn’t like what she was suggesting or what that meant about him or what he thought of her. Neil returned the smile, but only because he was amused that he was fine with Gretchen being a killer but wouldn’t allow her to be a whore.
“Consider it a favor for a friend,” Neil said. He left with his bags of meat and did not say anything more.
Later he called the handler and told him that he couldn’t do any more jobs for Gretchen.
NOW
An hour later he’s at the scene. There’s been a car fire and a gun battle. Two dead bodies. And two wrecked cars. Even though most of her hair is burned off and her skin charred, he recognizes Gretchen’s body right away. She’s soaking wet. Someone put the fire out.
A man walks out of the house and tells Neil that he was inside when it happened.
“Who are you?”
“Perry. I’m Gretchen’s boyfriend. She told me if anything ever happened to hide and call this number. So that’s what I did after I put out the fire.”
“You don’t seem too broken up about Gretchen.”
“I guess maybe boyfriend is stretching things.”
Neil gives Perry a hard stare and follows him inside.
“So it was just a casual thing?” Neil says.
“To be honest, I don’t know why I even let her stay here. She was a bit of a bitch and more than a little slutty, but hell you probably already knew that.”
Neil puts his kit down.
“Hey, Perry. Is there any bleach under the sink?”
“I’ll check.”
Neil watches Perry turn away towards the kitchen. Neil reaches into his kit and pulls out his claw hammer. He waits a moment, then follows Perry. Perry bends over to open the cupboard under the sink and turns his head as Neil’s hammer swings down hitting him in the temple.
Neil swings a few more times just to be sure, then drags Perry’s body into the bathroom. Fresh bodies are easier to deal with so he might as well start with Perry. It’s not the first time he killed someone. It is the first time he hadn’t planned to.
Before he gets to work, Neil uses his phone to get the location of the nearest hardware store. He’s going to need a new hammer.
END
- Jack Cameron