Steven Hunley
12-29-2012, 03:05 AM
This is a section of a short story. I'm attempting subtext. As you read is anything going on there that's not stated specifically? Is there anything between the lines? As a writer is took me a while to even say things specifically, but now I'd like to try to imply them or give the reader something 'between the lines' so to speak, so this is an experiment.
They took each other’s hand and boldly descended the stairs. And all while Pamela was suffering an acute attack of stage fright, Eddie was busy trying to unknot his stomach. It was their premiere night in Babylon. And Babylon was as strange a disco as ever there was.
They crossed the square holding hands. The night had turned cool and foggy, and the square itself, lit by a single feeble streetlight in each corner, grew dark and forbidding. Nothing was familiar to the strangers. Men stood in shadows whispering incomprehensible words, making unreadable gestures with their faces and hands.
The disco, emanating warmth, light, and sound would be the perfect sanctuary. Once they walked through the door past the guard, and down the stairs to the cellar, they felt the beat press their skin. The room smelled like stale perfume, cigarette smoke, sex and sweat. There was a bar at one end, a dance floor, and tables at the other. A deejay with headphones was bent over a console of shiny knobs with wires running away like twisted coils of black snakes. The ceiling was blue with smoke and in the center dangled a mirrored ball like in the 30’s with a spotlight beamed dead center.
The dance floor crowd was one writhing body with dozens of hands like an exotic Nataraja. Its arms and hands and fingers extended in obeisance to the pulsating rhythm. Heads nodded and bobbed with dilated eyes like a cadre of cannibals anticipating a feast. Eddie saw money in hands, both giving and getting, everywhere he looked. In the Babylon, bling bobbed on the surface of gritty reality like great gobs of fat on a restless ocean, suspended by greed and avarice, fueled by constant craving for acceptance, and an unappeasable desire for flesh. It was a fine young cannibal crowd, easily drunk on its own sweet success.
Many of the gay young things from the country still wore vanilla extract behind their ears like their mothers. A few of the young bucks, imitating their fathers, had been smoking corn-silk behind the barn, or attempting to distill Slivovitz from plums and sugar stolen from their mother’s pantries, poisoning their little brothers in the process. Now that they were old enough to drink at a club, their problems had compounded.
Pamela took deeper note of faces and expressions. Since the music was upbeat, she expected more smiles. But these faces were seriously busy at work. Some were on the hunt. Still others were studied and posing. Many resembled copies of Barbie dolls dancing with copies of Ken. Their identities under the make-up and clothing could not be revealed by cursory examination alone. That would take talk, and with only a few weeks of Serbo-Croatian under their belts, talk was sure to provide a challenge and language a thorny barrier.
And yet the barrier in their minds was Bangalore-torpedoed the moment it was erected by a gum-chewing waitress that stormed their table with determination.
“What’ll you have?” she said in plain English.
Her fishnet stocking were pocked with holes and her hair was tri-colored and frizzed by too much experimentation, and it was painfully obvious one of her high-heels was about to work lose any minute.
“Two rum and cokes,” was Eddie’s answer.
The spotlight attended to the twirling glass ball and flooded the corners of the room with various qualities of light. Just then, red white and blue stars and bars marched across the table top.
“I knew you were Americans the moment I saw you,” she remarked. “My name’s Molly and I’m an expatriate. That’s what the bartender calls me, an expatriate,” she flashed him a smile and laughed. “Pleased to meet you.”
As the bartender watched, she leaned across the table and shook hands.
At once Eddie saw the connection. “I’m Eddie and she’s Pam. We’re tourists,” Pam raised her eyebrows Eddie’s way.
“Well, I gotta scoot now, but I’ll be back with your drinks. Then we can talk. I haven’t been in the States in over a year!”
The bar tender grimaced until she started off, but she hesitated again.
“Say, where you all from?”
The spotlight shined down through sandy particles of silver and gold as if a dancer threw glitter in the air.
“We’re both from California,” shouted Eddie, “She’s from outside Sacramento and I’m from San Diego.”
The spotlight shined white and truthful like a Klieg light.
“I know something about California too. I’m from L.A.”
Molly burst out laughing and returned to work. She leaned over the bar and conversed with the bartender. He looked their way and smiled. To Pam’s way of thinking, the badly needed translator had been interviewed and accepted. The light moved again to feed the ego of the crowd. It reflected on a rebellion typical of youth, filled with secret ceremonies known only to them. To the sleek young illuminati of Dubrovnik, practicing their incantations in the Babylon was one of those ceremonies.
The rights were performed in public, in a hip venue, but one allowed by the authorities. To the secret police it was no secret. It was on the edge, but not over, since the comrade directors who ran the Babylon paid the police plenty of Kunas to keep it in balance so no money would spill unnecessarily out of the till that fed them all.
Molly returned with the drinks and a million and one questions. The fashions, the war, and the weather were soon brought up to date. She gave her private history of how she’d ran out of money soon after her boyfriend abandoned her, and was saving up for a return ticket.
“It’s all under the table, you understand. I have no official visa to work.”
“I understand your position, and we might have a way to help you out,” offered Eddie, who was confident he could read character, certain that as rusty as Molly was on the surface, she gleamed sterling underneath. Pam nudged him with her leg under the table and when his eyes met hers, nodded approval.
“You can speak the language, and you know your way around, would you be available to help?” asked Pamela.
“This place rarely gets tourists, and never Americans,” Molly said, “I could show you the sites on my day off.”
“It’s a done deal,” said Eddie. “We’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“Hang around here and watch the action awhile. We won’t close until three.”
Molly shook hands again and left.
Negotiating the narrow spaces between the tables, a young man in a top hat and swallow-tailed coat saw them sitting in the corner. He stopped and proceeded to run a yellow silk handkerchief from one hand to another, when suddenly it changed to red. When he noted the effect it had, he pulled up his sleeve and a ball appeared between his fingers, then two, then two more. They multiplied and disappeared like an illusion. Eddie smiled wryly, because as a child he’d been initiated in magic.
From out of the boy’s pocket a creature appeared. It was bright yellow, fuzzy, about the size of a crayon or a tube of lipstick. It crawled up out of the pocket and over his arm and wiggled about like a living thing. Then it went to his shoulder, twirled around a pencil he held in his hands, and disappeared up his sleeve.
“How do you do it? Tell me how,” Pamela said, and slipped him a copper coin.
“Don’t tell her,” said Eddie, and put silver in his pocket. “I good magician never tells his secrets.”
He turned to Pamela. “You don’t want to know, not really. It would let you down. It’s the ‘effect’ that matters. Knowing how it’s done only brings disappointment.”
Eddie was getting deep. Getting deep was Pam’s territory, but she acknowledged his presence. Eddie had angles she’d had yet to figure. She often wondered why he was so hard to reach at times, why he’d clamp down like an oyster long before she discovered the pearls of his inner-self. Eddie struck her as a private person, and it was one reason why she felt special when she was accepted into his fold. But after two years she felt she was just scratching the surface.
For a half an hour they sat silently, watching the crowd. Eddie laid his hand over her wrist and squeezed like his life depended on it. The grip was more necessary than the thirty minutes of unspoken words. Flesh was one thing only. It was better than words. It couldn’t be misinterpreted. And Pamela felt something good in his touch, an intimate communion without the thin cracker.
to be continued….
©Steven Hunley 2012
Any ideas? Anything brewing beneath the surface for YOU????
They took each other’s hand and boldly descended the stairs. And all while Pamela was suffering an acute attack of stage fright, Eddie was busy trying to unknot his stomach. It was their premiere night in Babylon. And Babylon was as strange a disco as ever there was.
They crossed the square holding hands. The night had turned cool and foggy, and the square itself, lit by a single feeble streetlight in each corner, grew dark and forbidding. Nothing was familiar to the strangers. Men stood in shadows whispering incomprehensible words, making unreadable gestures with their faces and hands.
The disco, emanating warmth, light, and sound would be the perfect sanctuary. Once they walked through the door past the guard, and down the stairs to the cellar, they felt the beat press their skin. The room smelled like stale perfume, cigarette smoke, sex and sweat. There was a bar at one end, a dance floor, and tables at the other. A deejay with headphones was bent over a console of shiny knobs with wires running away like twisted coils of black snakes. The ceiling was blue with smoke and in the center dangled a mirrored ball like in the 30’s with a spotlight beamed dead center.
The dance floor crowd was one writhing body with dozens of hands like an exotic Nataraja. Its arms and hands and fingers extended in obeisance to the pulsating rhythm. Heads nodded and bobbed with dilated eyes like a cadre of cannibals anticipating a feast. Eddie saw money in hands, both giving and getting, everywhere he looked. In the Babylon, bling bobbed on the surface of gritty reality like great gobs of fat on a restless ocean, suspended by greed and avarice, fueled by constant craving for acceptance, and an unappeasable desire for flesh. It was a fine young cannibal crowd, easily drunk on its own sweet success.
Many of the gay young things from the country still wore vanilla extract behind their ears like their mothers. A few of the young bucks, imitating their fathers, had been smoking corn-silk behind the barn, or attempting to distill Slivovitz from plums and sugar stolen from their mother’s pantries, poisoning their little brothers in the process. Now that they were old enough to drink at a club, their problems had compounded.
Pamela took deeper note of faces and expressions. Since the music was upbeat, she expected more smiles. But these faces were seriously busy at work. Some were on the hunt. Still others were studied and posing. Many resembled copies of Barbie dolls dancing with copies of Ken. Their identities under the make-up and clothing could not be revealed by cursory examination alone. That would take talk, and with only a few weeks of Serbo-Croatian under their belts, talk was sure to provide a challenge and language a thorny barrier.
And yet the barrier in their minds was Bangalore-torpedoed the moment it was erected by a gum-chewing waitress that stormed their table with determination.
“What’ll you have?” she said in plain English.
Her fishnet stocking were pocked with holes and her hair was tri-colored and frizzed by too much experimentation, and it was painfully obvious one of her high-heels was about to work lose any minute.
“Two rum and cokes,” was Eddie’s answer.
The spotlight attended to the twirling glass ball and flooded the corners of the room with various qualities of light. Just then, red white and blue stars and bars marched across the table top.
“I knew you were Americans the moment I saw you,” she remarked. “My name’s Molly and I’m an expatriate. That’s what the bartender calls me, an expatriate,” she flashed him a smile and laughed. “Pleased to meet you.”
As the bartender watched, she leaned across the table and shook hands.
At once Eddie saw the connection. “I’m Eddie and she’s Pam. We’re tourists,” Pam raised her eyebrows Eddie’s way.
“Well, I gotta scoot now, but I’ll be back with your drinks. Then we can talk. I haven’t been in the States in over a year!”
The bar tender grimaced until she started off, but she hesitated again.
“Say, where you all from?”
The spotlight shined down through sandy particles of silver and gold as if a dancer threw glitter in the air.
“We’re both from California,” shouted Eddie, “She’s from outside Sacramento and I’m from San Diego.”
The spotlight shined white and truthful like a Klieg light.
“I know something about California too. I’m from L.A.”
Molly burst out laughing and returned to work. She leaned over the bar and conversed with the bartender. He looked their way and smiled. To Pam’s way of thinking, the badly needed translator had been interviewed and accepted. The light moved again to feed the ego of the crowd. It reflected on a rebellion typical of youth, filled with secret ceremonies known only to them. To the sleek young illuminati of Dubrovnik, practicing their incantations in the Babylon was one of those ceremonies.
The rights were performed in public, in a hip venue, but one allowed by the authorities. To the secret police it was no secret. It was on the edge, but not over, since the comrade directors who ran the Babylon paid the police plenty of Kunas to keep it in balance so no money would spill unnecessarily out of the till that fed them all.
Molly returned with the drinks and a million and one questions. The fashions, the war, and the weather were soon brought up to date. She gave her private history of how she’d ran out of money soon after her boyfriend abandoned her, and was saving up for a return ticket.
“It’s all under the table, you understand. I have no official visa to work.”
“I understand your position, and we might have a way to help you out,” offered Eddie, who was confident he could read character, certain that as rusty as Molly was on the surface, she gleamed sterling underneath. Pam nudged him with her leg under the table and when his eyes met hers, nodded approval.
“You can speak the language, and you know your way around, would you be available to help?” asked Pamela.
“This place rarely gets tourists, and never Americans,” Molly said, “I could show you the sites on my day off.”
“It’s a done deal,” said Eddie. “We’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“Hang around here and watch the action awhile. We won’t close until three.”
Molly shook hands again and left.
Negotiating the narrow spaces between the tables, a young man in a top hat and swallow-tailed coat saw them sitting in the corner. He stopped and proceeded to run a yellow silk handkerchief from one hand to another, when suddenly it changed to red. When he noted the effect it had, he pulled up his sleeve and a ball appeared between his fingers, then two, then two more. They multiplied and disappeared like an illusion. Eddie smiled wryly, because as a child he’d been initiated in magic.
From out of the boy’s pocket a creature appeared. It was bright yellow, fuzzy, about the size of a crayon or a tube of lipstick. It crawled up out of the pocket and over his arm and wiggled about like a living thing. Then it went to his shoulder, twirled around a pencil he held in his hands, and disappeared up his sleeve.
“How do you do it? Tell me how,” Pamela said, and slipped him a copper coin.
“Don’t tell her,” said Eddie, and put silver in his pocket. “I good magician never tells his secrets.”
He turned to Pamela. “You don’t want to know, not really. It would let you down. It’s the ‘effect’ that matters. Knowing how it’s done only brings disappointment.”
Eddie was getting deep. Getting deep was Pam’s territory, but she acknowledged his presence. Eddie had angles she’d had yet to figure. She often wondered why he was so hard to reach at times, why he’d clamp down like an oyster long before she discovered the pearls of his inner-self. Eddie struck her as a private person, and it was one reason why she felt special when she was accepted into his fold. But after two years she felt she was just scratching the surface.
For a half an hour they sat silently, watching the crowd. Eddie laid his hand over her wrist and squeezed like his life depended on it. The grip was more necessary than the thirty minutes of unspoken words. Flesh was one thing only. It was better than words. It couldn’t be misinterpreted. And Pamela felt something good in his touch, an intimate communion without the thin cracker.
to be continued….
©Steven Hunley 2012
Any ideas? Anything brewing beneath the surface for YOU????