God’s eye’s narrowed. “Well, it was such a round-about cause that the computer could not compute the outcome before it happened. You see, it’s all about a girl.”
“It always is,” Eve sighed. “I am really tired of getting the blame for these things.”
“Dearest, no one is blaming you,” Adam comforted her. “At least no one in this room.”
There was a pause. Adam looked up at God, who jumped a little and replied, “Of course not.”
Eve smoothed her skirt with her hands. “Anyway, proceed.”
“It all really starts at a ball in 1910,” God continued, and the picture changed to a huge ballroom, then the image zoomed in on a group of young men surrounding a particular young woman. She was talking animatedly which made her elaborately styled, shiny brown curls dance. When she laughed her violet eyes twinkled.
“You are looking at Mademoiselle Annabella Dione, the belle of Montreal. Now here are the young men we are interested in.” The picture zoomed in on the two young men who were the closest to Annabella, and obviously the most rapt. “The blonde is Gregory Finch. He is an up and coming American. Currently he is working on the staff of the American ambassador. Eventually he will be an adviser to Herbert Hoover. The dark haired fellow is Jonathan Goodling. He is a member of the Canadian Parliament.” Eve walked closer to the screen and tilted her head as she studied the two boys. Gregory’s face had an earnest, serious expression as if Miss Dione’s conversation carried the weight of the world. They watched Jonathan change from laughing to smoldering rage as Annabella touched the lapel of Gregory’s jacket and then to adoration and passion as her shoulder brushed his when she turned to gesture at the painting behind her.
God said, "Originally, Jonathan did not make it to the party. It all starts with a feather."
"Oh this is the part of the story I love," Adam declared as he plopped himself down in God's chair. "Let me get comfortable. So what random series of events has led to this catastrophe?"
God squinted at him, but continued. "Well it starts with Goodling's tailor. He's rather fond of the seedier side of town, mostly underground, bare-knuckled fighting. He's a big gambler. Anyway, we have to go back to a round of fights the night before he made the tux Goodling is wearing. Originally, the fights broke up early as no one would come forward to challenge the champion." The image on the wall turned to a smoke filled basement filled with sweaty and cheering men. In the middle was a human mountain with a shaved head and a face like a bull. He snorted and Adam could have sworn he saw steam leave the nostrils. He gave a long, low whistle. "I can see why. The man also looked like he hadn't bathed in a, well, ever.”
"Yes, well, in the alternative, a short man with a feather in his hat walks by a taller man. The feather tickles the taller man's nose, making him sneeze. As he sneezes he stumbles into the ring, and the challenger immediately pounces." Again the scene played out in front of them. A tall, thin man was doing his best to stay out of the monster's grasp, trying to get out of the ring, but the men surrounding kept pushing him back in, shouting and laughing. Money was quickly changing hands. “Now, if only this unfortunate man had just gotten knocked out, and everyone gone home, but alas, no.” For a few panicked moments, the tall thin man scrambled around, barely dodging punches, then suddenly his defense seemed to become more structured. His strategy seemed to be: don’t get hit. This went on for fifteen minutes. The champion was wearing down. Slowly his punches got sloppier, and his defenses were lowering. The tall thin man threw one punch right at the champion’s jaw. It was blocked with a forearm, and the tall thin man took a fist in the gut. He didn’t get up, though a small groan escaped his lips before he lost consciousness.
With a grimace on her face Eve said, “That was unfortunate.”
“Yes,” God replied. “Especially in that it set this whole sequence of events in motion. See the old man in the back that looks like he is made out of toothpicks and sandpaper?” Both Adam and Eve nodded, and Lassie gave a little affirmative woof. “That is the tailor.” He was jumping up and down and giggling. “He just won a lot of money. He will spend the rest of the evening getting drunk.” The picture changed to a pub and a raucous group of men surrounding the tailor who was obviously a shot away from passing out, but still had a huge grin on his withered, old face.
“This night of partying leaves him tired the next day, but he is on a deadline to finish the tuxedo for Mr. Goodling.” Now the old man was sitting cross-legged in his shop, desperately trying to keep his eyes open as he put in the hem of a pant leg. He still had the grin on his face. “Right here, during this yawn, he is going to drop a stitch.” Then in fast forward, a delivery boy picked up the suit and took it to the Goodling residence. They watched Jonathan Goodling meticulously prep himself for the ball; he then began to leave. “Here is where the feather, the winning bet, and the missed stitch become significant. Right before he reached the first stair, Goodling stopped and leaned down to pick at the string hanging from his cuff. As he did that, a cat came streaking across the top stair. God paused the picture and pointed at the cat, saying, “In the original time line there was no string. Goodling kept going and ended up tripping over the cat, taking a spill down the stairs and breaking a leg. Instead he ends up as we saw him at first.” The wall was back to Annabella and her suitors.
Finally Adam said, “Not to spoil a perfectly good story, but why don’t we just go and steal the short man’s hat, or stop him or the tall thin man from going to the fights?”
God shook his head, “Somehow a change in the original code for Earth’s history happened. It is very tiny, within an acceptable margin of error. A glitch, if you will. No matter what scenarios I run, that fight ends up happening. One way or another the tailor ends up drunk and missing that stitch. Even sneaking into Goodling’s room and cutting the thread can’t work. He doesn’t leave the suit from the time it arrives until he dresses, and he won’t no matter what happens in the house. I even tried pushing him down the stairs or a trip wire, and it always ends worse than the broken leg. I even briefly contemplated setting a small kitchen fire, but that leads to changes well outside parameters.”
“I didn’t think a glitch like that was possible,” Eve commented.
“Neither did I,” God said in a troubled tone. “We will be working on that while you are on the ground.”
“Well, they both have the look of men who would rather draw pistols at dawn than share a beer,” Adam quipped as he turned from the screen back to God. “So, we are looking at the beginning of a jealousy? Which of them gets the girl and which starts a war?”
“Neither of them—and both.”
God and Adam started when Eve spoke. God replied quizzically, “That’s right. How did you know?”
“Because our Mdm. Dione has been doing her best to make this young waiter here jealous. She is laughing a little too loudly, and every time she touches one of her admirers, she glances at him. And he has been carrying around those canapés on his tray for an hour without serving one of them.”
God sighed. “Dear Eve, you have excellent perception. If only you could have developed it before the apple. In three days, Annabella will be running away with the dashing waiter, Henri.”
Adam clapped God on the shoulder. “You know you have to be thankful for one thing.”
God arched an eyeball at him. “And that would be?”
“At least when the planet computer went crazy, it only spewed out a finite amount of basic human predicaments.”
God folded his arms across his chest. “Yes, I suppose that is something, but they do excel at making them all tangled messes.”
Lassie reached up to the screen and scratched at the feet of Gregory and Jonathan and a low whine escaped her lips.
“I agree, Lassie,” Adam said nodding and giving the dog a quick scratch behind the ears. “And instead of commiserating over my suggested plethora of beers, they choose to blame each other?”
After a thoughtful pause, God replied, “We
ll, I suppose it is something more along the lines of hurt pride. You see, as these stories often go, Annabella’s family would never approve of the waiter. To keep everyone from finding out before the elopement, Annabella is leading both men around by the nose hairs, rather publicly. Then to add to the confusion, she accepts both of their marriage proposals the evening before she and Henri make their escape. Again, this wouldn’t have happened originally as Goodling was convalescing at the time. Finch was given the chance to propose and consequently was the only one spurned. Once the truth is discovered, both men are humiliated, naturally. The only target to take that humiliation out on is each other as Annabella and Henri are happily on a ship to France with all of her and most of her mother’s jewels.”
“Hm, you have to give the eloping couple credit for style and out and out, well, balls,” Adam said. Both Lassie and Eve nodded in agreement.
“More than you may realize. Annabella and Henri will open a hotel and dance hall when they get to Paris. It will become rather well known. Come World War Two, it will be a favorite of the Nazis.” Again the screen flicked. Henri and Annabella change into a middle-aged, well-dressed couple welcoming men in SS uniforms with French ladies on their arms. “However, they are also high ranking members of the French resistance. Thanks to their free flowing liquor and charisma, they become a top source of crucial information that will be used against the Nazis. Their elopement and presence in Paris is essential.” The couple was shown going through the pockets and luggage of one of the officers while he was passed out on the bed, snoring. A half-clad young lady was aiding them.
“The Nazis certainly knew how to appreciate a nice set of bosoms,” Adam commented.
Eve glared at him. “You know, for someone who was never a baby or breast fed, your breast obsession is rather disturbing.”
“It comes from having access to the very first pair ever made, darling,” Adam replied to appease her.
“So run along to Montreal, keep Misters Finch and Goodling from becoming bitter enemies while making sure the future of the object of their shared love or hatred, however you choose to look at it, is not changed.”
Duffy Batzer is an on-hold teacher while she educates the two children she has to actually raise. She has wanted to be a published writer since her first grade teacher bound, Silver the Flying Unicorn, between two pieces of wallpaper. "Oops," Said God will hopefully be her first novel soon...ish.
Swan Song
By
Ann Elia Stewart
She pulled into the parking lot several paces behind the ambulance, and turned off her engine and lights. A red strobe bounced off the car’s custom leather walls, her presence illuminated by jagged strokes, but to whom she could not know—no one yet had emerged from the ambulance. It simply sat with its incessant light poking through the night, hemorrhaging onto the rain-soaked asphalt, reminding her that this indeed was not a dream.
Minutes might have passed, perhaps even hours as she sat in limbo watching a set of double doors at the back of the hospital. She suspected the driver and passenger of the ambulance had been doing the same, blowing smoke out their windows, streams of poison mingling with the fog, adding to the film noir of her reality.
A woman in a long, white lab coat pushed through the back doors. Driver and passenger bolted from the ambulance, their cigarettes skipping across the asphalt like miniature orange comets. The fat one stretched, his shirt rising over his dumpling belly. He sported a shaved head, round like a pumpkin’s.
The door handle was cold. She must have been sitting there for hours. Maybe one. She waited. They huddled in conference, but their conversation struck her as too jolly.
They have no idea.
The fat one with the shaved head broke away from the group and opened the ambulance doors.
Her handle gave way, yet she waited, eyes riveted to those doors. The attendants flanked a gurney carrying a shiny, black bag, the red strobe catching its sheen, reminding her, of all things, patent leather. Red patent leather shoes. Tap shoes.
She opened the car door and rushed them, water splashing into her spiked-heeled shoes.
“I need to go in with you.”
Surprise animated their otherwise bored faces, people who take death, injury, profound illness in their stride, just another claim to keystroke into the system.
Lab Coat Woman spun around, her sneakered feet squeaking on the wet asphalt.
“You can’t.”
As if I have no right. “I’m coming inside.”
Lab Coat Woman studied her, her voice softening. “Look, I know this is terribly difficult, but I’d be breaking regula-”
“Are there regulations when they’re born?” She held her gaze. Woman to woman.
Lab Coat Woman broke free first, preferring to look at the ground.
Rain pooled in the creases of the black vinyl bag. She swept a small wet puddle to the ground. “It’s cold. Can we please go in? I’ll sit by the door, that’s all. I’ll just sit there.”
“I know how hard this must be—”
She stiffened under Lab Coat Woman’s attempt to soothe her, drawing in her fruity, sweet scent. She hated that kind of perfume, found it cloying, unnatural. “Won’t you grant me this?” she heard herself say to this person who smelled like a teenager, this person so concerned with following the rules, even now. “I’m asking to sit there, outside the room. I just want to be — there.” The lab coat sleeve was rough in her clutch, something real at least. “Please, I need to do this.”
The sky unleashed sheets of rain, the damp, dank air penetrating to the bone.
“Okay. Come along then.”
There are no shadows here. She turned her head first to one side, then the other, the white linoleum softened by a few spent florescent bulbs. Her ass hurt, the metal card table chair someone brought her felt like a marble slab.
She closed her eyes. The doughy light helped her sink into a void.
A late summer’s day. The tang of freshly squeezed lemons stung her nose, the clinking of ice cubes, a daddy sawing wood for the coming winter nights to be filled with hot chocolate, pizza by the fireplace, the little girl twirling around the yard, her hands clasped together over her head, her long, blonde ponytail snapping side to side with each pirouette.
“Christina! I brought you and daddy lemonade.”
She detected joy. She may be smiling.
He was smoking a cigarette, its foul tip dangling from his lips, the curl of smoke writhing through the air she breathed, those innocent lungs, that beautiful, clean little body. He promised he’d quit smoking and drinking after the baby was born. He promised a lot of things.
Her eyes snapped open. She wanted the relief of tears, she wanted to hear herself scream.
A dull buzzing pierced the stillness. Long strokes of sound came from behind the door, like a toy, a reasonable facsimile of a chainsaw.
She glanced again down the hall, the endless hall with the blazing orange EXIT sign.
She closed her eyes, the buzz making her flinch.
“Still here?”
A black blazer now draped Lab Coat Woman’s slim shoulders, a pink ribbon attached to its lapel.
“What have you found?” She watched for any expression, any sign. An answer. A confirmation. To her surprise, the woman’s stoicism faltered.
“I’ve printed a copy of the report for you.”
She stared at the pink ribbon.
Christina’s toe shoes, their trailing, satiny, pink ribbons wrapped around her ankles, her calves. Oh, how high she’d reach, how tall and proud she’d stand, defying Miss Anastasia’s repudiation, imagine the stupidity of that woman punishing this beautiful gazelle for a gene she had no more to do with than those born short and stick thin: Miss Anastasia’s idea of Odette.
Save for one — Christina’s senior show, Miss Anastasia’s conspicuous absence. She wanted her to stay, to watch Christina rise to her full height, Odette awaiting her Prince, her body a perfect arc, her toes tipped
as if teetering atop a music box, accomplished and proud.
She wanted Ms. Anastasia to realize the mistake she had made all those years, relegating Christina to chorus. Did she ever know disappointment? The situation offered her no choice — she had to mention the little nips Miss Anastasia took, before, during, after practice. She had kept silent too long. The more she nipped, the more unreasonable she became. “Strict,” the board chairman tried to label it. “Irresponsible,” she countered. “Bad role model.”
Lab Coat Woman’s hand warmed her own.
“We’re taking the body—”
“Christina.”
“Yes. We’re taking Christina to the funeral home now.” She lowered her eyes and rifled through her papers.
“Is my car safe here?”
“Excuse me?”
“I wondered if my car would be safe here.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“I’m not asking. I’m riding with her.”
Christina’s fiancé wore his hair like the fat attendant’s, a shaved head revealing the bumps, the imperfections of his skull. That purplish stain at the back of his neck.
The first thing he said, before Christina had a chance to introduce him, was, “Smells good in here. I like a woman who knows how to cook.” Surely, he had meant it as a compliment. And then he scooped her daughter into him and nuzzled her neck. “She wants to show me something,” he had said, except it came out sounding like “sump-in.’”
She stood in the kitchen watching the two of them cross the backyard, Christina at least three inches taller, her arm linked inside this bulldog of a person. She could never have pictured this.
She stroked her daughter’s face, pulling the zipper further down, the bruises around her neck like a tattoo of a Victorian collar.
Death by electrocution, the official ruling.
Indeed, soot flecked her daughter’s aureoles, her nipples encrusted with dried blood from the bite of the clamp. It diverted her attention from the filet of Christina’s torso.
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