I have acronyms for most of the books I represent. It's easier to write ADSOB than spell out A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUE every time I write to the author Adam Eisenberg.
Some are great: DOGS (DREAMING OF GWEN STEFANI by Evan Mandery)
Some are deliciously naughty: TIT (TUNE IN TOKYO by Tim Anderson)
I love TUNE IN TOKYO but I couldn't sell it. I say this somewhat shamefacedly since it's a GREAT book, and I think it's my fault it didn't sell. But the author Tim Anderson is a lot of things, and a gracious gent is one of them.
He self-published TUNE IN TOKYO and was kind enough to speak well of me in the acknowledgments.
In honor of the publication of my favorite book that isn't "mine": a writing contest!
Tell me a story in 100 words or fewer. Use the following words in the story:
jimmy
frame
viola
smoking
sword
One entry per person please. You can re-do your entry if you need to, but only one is counted for the purposes of the prize. If you enter twice, I take the later edition.
The prize you ask? Of course, it is a copy of the book! I bet I can even hornswoggle Tim into autographing it for you!
Contest starts now and runs until midnight Saturday (11:59pm Saturday 8/28). All times listed are Eastern Shark Time.
Go!
57 comments:
Jimmy F. Ram Esquire, decapitated the pretty viola with a single stroke of his smoking sword.
I’m taking viola lessons. Some people get a wild hair midlife to learn something new – usually piano or painting. For me, it is the viola. Many summers growing up, my mom would send me to my Uncle Jimmy’s place. You know the type, always seems old, smoking cigars, kind of cranky. The room he let me use was sparse – a bed, a dresser – an empty picture frame leaning against the wall – and an old viola in the closet. I found a sword as well, but it scared me and I left it alone. That viola, though, it called to me.
Deet-deet!
“Honey! What have I told you about smoking in the shower?!”
“Dad! I’m not smoking! It’s the shower!!”
Deet-deet!
“Don’t make me jimmy the door frame young missy!!”
“What does a skinny viola’s cane have to do with you yelling at my bathroom?!”
Deet-deet!
“I’m coming in!!”
CRASH!!
“AAAAAAGH! I’M NOT DECENT!!!”
Deet-deet!
“Are you okay? Where are you stashing the smokes?”
Deet-deet
“DO I LOOK LIKE I’M HIDING CIGARS ON ME?!! I’M TRYING TO SHOWER!!! GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM WITH YOUR SWORD AND LEARN TO COOK PROPERLY SO YOU DON’T SET OFF THE FIRE ALARM!!!!!!”
Viola knew she could jimmy the door frame with her sword, move her manuscript from the slush pile to the top of the heap on Ms. Reid's desk, and begone before the octo-guard spotted her.
"I'm so hot I'm smoking!" she said, just before a fuzzy tentacle encircled her neck.
Jimmy leaned against the door frame, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. June glared at him, her viola bow held out like a sword.
"If you're here to beg for forgiveness..." she snarled.
Jimmy laughed softly. Despondently.
"Nothing of the sort, my dear." He took his hat off. "I came to say goodbye. I'm leaving. This is it."
Jenny lowered the bow slightly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the debt's paid. But I've gotta disappear."
"Wait," she started.
He cut her off with a nod toward the stage.
"You're up next. Break a leg."
"Jimmy, I-"
"It's too late, love. Goodbye."
“Viola,” Jimmy said as he presented the custom-made four-inch gilt, museum-quality frame he’d just crafted to encase a customer’s own painting of a sword rising from a smoking pool of lava.
Jimmy had meant “voila” of course, and tried to play off the mistake as a joke. The customer had smirked, openly mocking Jimmy’s attempt at “talking fancy.”
He couldn’t have known that working as a framer at Aaron Brothers was cover for Jimmy’s real job as a hitman. Or that Jimmy really didn’t like being mocked for his shortcomings. Jimmy would see the customer again. In his professional capacity.
My orchestra teacher was one of those people who seemed to have a psychotic-killer smile plastered onto her face. I always envisioned myself knocking her out by slamming my viola into that perky head of hers.
One morning, she made us play a pointless game. “All you have to do is hit the piñata!” she squealed. My smoking-hot Jimmy Dean sausage I ate that morning must have been brightening my day after all.
I took the plastic sword she got from Burger King, framed my eyes with a blindfold and swiped at a direction. But not the direction of the piñata. The direction of the psychotic orchestra teacher.
Jimmy’s body lay motionless in a pool of blood in front of the fireplace. The sword had sliced his jugular vein with precision. Hanging on the wall above him was a solid oak frame that contained a painting of his grandfather, the oil tycoon, smoking a cigar. While Jimmy bled, his wife sat serenely on the couch. She had wanted retribution for his infidelity. With one swift motion, the deadly blade served her well. Now, she picked up her viola, tuned it slightly and played a melody of sweet revenge.
Viola sat in her car, smoking the stogie in an effort to relax, blade across her lap, debating her next move. It had taken a half-dozen attempts at running Jimmy through with the sword before the life drained from his eyes. She washed the sword in the tub and wiped her prints off the window frame as she left Jimmy's apartment by the fire escape, the same way she'd gotten in.
She'd dump the sword in the river. Finally she turned the key, the engine reluctantly springing to life after a half-dozen failed attempts. The irony wasn't lost on her.
“Vanilla cone with one jimmy.”
The ice cream man sighed, but proceeded to dip the cone and topped it with one sprinkle.
He passed the cone through the window frame, and I paid the man at the register. I squeezed passed the drunken viola player in the corner to an open table under the “No Smoking” sign and enjoyed my treat.
String music grates on my nerves, and drunken string music sounds even worse. It sounded like he was dragging a sword across a chalkboard. But, I suffered the music to enjoy one of the last ice creams of summer.
Out of time. I risk a glance at the smoking console. Damn quantum entanglement frame is slagged. No way back— Space, why had I yelled at her? Sweating, retching from fumes, I spasmodically jimmy the sword into the hatch cover. Has Viola made it to the creche pod? Our only hope is jettison the stasis-babies, rendezvous at L1... Turning to lever the erstwhile pirate's weapon with my foot, I behold her skittering across the outside of the cockpit, eerily frozen in mid-utterance. Viola, drifting, reaching, eyes bloodshot and glassed, ice shards freezing out as her last exhalation disperses into interplanetary blackness.
On the balcony above, he played Ravel's Sonatine on his viola and I stood on the patio below in a pink lace negligee smoking a cigarette.
He had entered my bedroom earlier... and he had left a note on a pink lace doily beside a pink picture frame. But, it was over and I was not to be seduced by music or song.
When I looked up... he jumped.
He jumped, and somehow managed to die by falling on his own sword. I collapsed over his body and cried, "Jimmy, you silly fool."
I held onto the pink tightly.
Viola sauntered towards Jimmy frame and wrapped her legs around his waist tightly then caressed his lips with the blade of her smoking sword. He began to beg for mercy she laughed the sound echoed within the abandoned warehouse. She placed the sword on the ground.
"Your still breathing Jim."
"Viola I did what you asked I kept things quiet." She slapped him on his face blood trickled from his lips, she gets off him quickly and grabbed him by the collar.
"You stupid swine, Chief of the Boston police should have done more to keep certain people quiet for good." Viola picked up the sword ran her finger down the blade and stared at Jimmy then raised the sword.
"Say your prayers big boy."
I cannot speak as Viola watches me.
My dry mouth tastes the bitter flavor of her cigarette that dangles, smoking, from her lips. And those eyes; colder than I remember, reek of death.
Slender fingers run across a glass frame holding a sword that looks ancient, and I know, in a split second she could shatter the glass and run me through.
I stand, frozen, my heart beating restlessly in my chest, and I know she hears it. It’s been so long. She should be dead.
“I’m sorry Jimmy,” she whispers as she approaches. “You will hate me for this.”
“It’s a frame up, I tell you. I’m being framed!”
“Oh, come on, Jimmy. They found you standing over the body with the bloody sword in your hand. That’s pretty much a smoking gun, you know?”
“Why would I kill her? I didn’t even know the broad.”
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe for that three million dollar violin?”
“What violin? I don’t know nothing about no three million dollar violin. Do I look like a guy that would know about freaking violins? Beside, it wasn’t a violin, it was a damn viola!”
Some sounds you can feel. They can jimmy the most lockdown of souls free. Theses sounds come from wood, crafted to frame beauty to be seen in honeyed yellows and browns.
Pace gives a theme that can speak to a slow sundown or a smoking, smoldering fire within. In hand, a bow brings life as a sword can end.
Viola!
With the security system deactivated you feel no fear while you jimmy the lock on the door and creep into the mansion. You make your way to the East wing: the gallery. A British Cavalry Officer’s Presentation Sword cir. 1850, a Monet in a frame, and an antique viola that belonged to William Primrose later, you sneak out through the hallway when you hear footsteps and the hammer fall on some kind of revolver. You turn and see your father, smoking a Cuban cigar with the barrel pointing at you. He ashes on his own Persian rug and says, “Again.”
I tried the old Caddy's door. No luck.
"Think you can jimmy that?" I asked.
"Sure. You might want to look away," Viola said, and shattered the window with her elbow. She reached through the frame and unlocked the doors. "Get in."
She lit a limp cigarette and let it hang from her lips as she fumbled with the ignition wires.
"When'd you start smoking?"
The engine roared to life. She set down the newly-christened sword between our seats, blew out a stream of smoke, and put the car into gear. "When the world turned to shit," she said.
Jimmy played the viola, smoking thunder rising from the rosened strings. Music like a sword of sweet heartbreak brought tears to the eyes of the crowd, and thus unnoticed Jimmy's little brother lifted their wallets in the dim cavern of the subway.
Black clouds moved across the sky like ambling Bison. This place was his, this place was Jimmy. A slight, breezy chill signaled the coming storm. He gritted his eyes, cracked from a sunny life of barefoot walks and shirtless sunrises. The last plank for the window frame was ready. It was warped, like an old, bent sword. Old folks called these bits of leftover wood “nuggets”. Beside him, a clear brown ashtray held the red embers of a still smoking cigarette butt. A solid crack sounded as he hammered the last nail in. Voila, the window was now storm proof.
Frank spread the case file across the table. Five card stud with a deck of evidence. Shall I ante up, or fold?
He removed his gloves, wringing them as his mind whirred: A shattered viola. A piercing bow. An innocent child. Blood spatter. Suspect. Too perfect alibi.
He unsheathed a Jimmy’s Slim and began smoking. My sword of slow death.
His eyes widened. Though a quicker death awaits. He noticed the pack of Jimmy’s Slims in the photo. And that pattern in the blood, is that from leather?
He perused his gloves and found the dark stain.
I’m being framed.
Jimmy leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms over his bare, muscular chest. Viola stared at him, drooling.
"You've got a great tit."
Her arms flew to cover her clothed torso, her bright red ears smoking. "You pervert!" she squealed, snatching a sword.
"Why, what's wrong? It's a great book." He smirked and picked up her copy of Tune in Tokyo.
Viola relaxed, her face was now the same shade as her ears. "I won it from Janet Reid with my contest entry about a guy named Jimmy and a woman named Viola."
His words sliced her heart with their cold and unforgiving blade, and then as if his weapon had more to say, he took his sword and unleashed it on his assistant.
“And you, Viola, with your pathetic, lonely soul, always seeking someone to frame and hold on your nightstand.”
Viola, still smoking her cigarette, buttoned her blouse. Her boss’s wife was weakened by the shock of Jimmy’s outrage, but Viola knew she couldn’t let him continue.
“I understand you are upset,” she said. “It’s not everyday your wife bangs your secretary. But let’s be honest, Jimmy, you had me first.”
Viola—one smoking hot babe—bounced on Jimmy’s sword until she broke the bed frame. Two years later she broke his heart. Three thousand for child support, and he was just plain broke. Four days, it had been since that fat-assed, red-faced boss canned him. Five hours and Jimmy was on a tear, perched on a barstool at Lucky’s. Six bullets loaded in the chamber, the gunmetal was cold against his temple. By seven, they pronounced him dead. Eight people showed up to the funeral. Nine including the priest. What a ten-pack of condoms could’ve done for poor Jimmy…
Tokyo. Midsummer midnight. Rivers of neon slice through Harajuku. At the ninniku ramen stand, bleary-eyed salarimen slurp their noodles, sit smoking. I’m arm-in-arm with the actress playing Viola in the British Council’s weird kabuki version of Twelfth Night. She’s Scottish, but she hid that accent well while she carried a samurai sword for the love-struck duke. I lean on her slender frame. Stumble downstairs to Jimmy Mac’s to drink a mess of cheap saké.
“I envy actors. The way you can escape. Every single night.” Am I slurring?
“What country, friends, is this?” Viola’s opening line. She whispers it.
Los ladrones aparecen en la noche, uno llevando pistola y el otro una navaja.
[The thieves appear in the night, one with a gun and the other with a knife.]
"Escuchen bien, gueyes,” dice el mas ancho. “Quítense sus cosas, y échenlas allí.” El chicano viene desde atrás con mochila.
[“Listen up, dumbasses,” says the thicker one. “Take all your things and throw them there.” The chicano comes from behind with a backpack.]
“Santi,” dice mi esposa, jalándome por la mano. El chicano se acerca.
[“Jimmy,” my wife says, tugging on my hand. The chicano comes closer.]
“¿Como que andas en ropa tan chafa, guey?” Se rie.
[“How can you wear such sucky clothing, dumbass?” He laughs.]
“Estamos cruzando la frontera. ¿Que quieres, un smoking?"
[“We’re crossing the border. What do you want, a tuxedo?”]
“No sé, descíframe,” responde, agarrando su cintaron. Queda mirando a mi esposa.
[“I don’t know, figure it/me out,” he responds, grabbing his belt. He stares at my wife.]
“Si la violas, morirás,” le digo.
[“If you rape her, you will die,” I tell him.]
“¿Me vas a matar, guey? Tengo pistola.”
[“You’re going to kill me, dumbass? I have a gun.”]
“Live for sword, die for sword,” le digo, en Ingles.
[“Los que toman espada, a espada perecerán,” I tell him, in English.]
Giselle panted as she tried to jimmy her ample frame into the red velvet dress. Cinching the corset gave her cleavage quite a boost. She was smoking hot!
Her nerves gave her the sound of a badly tuned viola as she warbled, “Come in!” to the knock at the cabin door.
The door creaked open to reveal her husband, dressed as a dashing pirate, his sword clanking as he entered. He gave her a rakish grin. “You are a vision. We’re sailing into Tokyo harbor. Ready for the costume regatta?”
She smiled and slipped her hand into his, “Aye.”
Hi Janet!
I realized that I used smoke instead of smoking - so here's my re-entry using the correct vocabulary list! It won't let me delete my previous entry...
My eyes flutter open as the smoke alarm goes off.
"Janet! We have to evacuate!" Suzie shouts, her voice teetering precariously on the edge of hysteria.
“Huh?” I rub my cheek as I lift my head from my keyboard. A post-it containing a doodle of a sword being used as a bow on a viola falls to the floor. I stare at Suzie at the door of the copy room. Behind her slight frame I can see the copy machine smoking.
“What happened?”
“Paper jam…” She says and hangs her head.
“What were you copying?”
“Jimmy wanted to copy his butt, and…”
“That editor…”
I just had to buy the steampunkish piece at the Little Italy gallery, by controversial Mob watercolorist Jimmy Viola -- my nemesis. No frame, but I didn't even care. The title Smoking Sword made me laugh, see? 'Course, wouldn't be so funny if it'd been my hand with the third-degree burns. But Jimmy couldn't resist the little ironic post-modernist self-referential joke. (Or a tube of FirstDegree, come to that.)
Can still feel the pinprick of the épée on my collarbone -- and his scream a split-second later: Oh SH*T...!
I won that one.
The fire started spreading soon. I tried jimmying the door, yet again, to no avail. The thick, black smoke invaded my non-smoking lungs. I needed a way out. I refused to die like a roasted marshmallow. The only possible exit was the window. I looked around for the sword I'd seen earlier but found it melting in the fire. In a corner, where the fire hadn't reached yet was a viola. I picked it up and threw it at the window, breaking it. With its arc I cleaned the glass on the rim. I jumped as my sneakers caught fire.
Bunny groaned when Jimmy Falcone pulled out his viola. Stripping sucked, but trying to strip to classical music from a viola was damned near impossible. The club’s owner, shrugged his shoulders. No way he was going to tell a mob enforcer to put away his viola, especially one as crazy as Jimmy. The man carried a sword for God’s sake. A freaking sword.
Jimmy might be crazy, but he was a good tipper. As Bunny danced to his viola Jimmy smiled.
“I’ll bet your smoking hot body is just a frame for a great personality. Want to grab some dinner?”
"For God sakes, Jimmy! It's a frame-up I tell ya! Ain't you never seen a smoking gun left smokin'? Geez oh man Jimbo, Harry was here before us. HE took the viola outta its case and left your sword. 'Member, he was admirin' your collection of dusty old weaponry when he was drinkin' beers, shootin' the breeze."
"Well gul durn Freddy you Sherlock, how'd you decipher it was Har?"
"Elementary easy Jimmy. Harry always makes his point."
********************
~ By Absolutely*Kate,
believing in believers,
which means now I've gotta check out the book that started all this contesting. (Thanks Janet)
Viola studied the smoking, crumpled frame of her beloved Jeep Jimmy, then turned to the mechanic with a questioning eyebrow.
"How did this happen? I came in for a simple brake job and you've managed to total the thing".
The mechanic, a surly unshaven man in stained gray overalls, knuckled his ball cap up off of his forehead, and scratched his receding hairline. He coughed, shuffled and said, "I coulda sword I got that jack fixed last week. Sorry 'bout that!"
When gaijin Jimmy came to, his oversize frame was lying in his own “platform pizza,” a good old-fashioned train-station barf puddle.
Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to supplement his ESL teacher pay by performing at Ueno train station last night. Yep, he’d been a stupid tit to think he’d earn anything by squeaking out tunes on his viola. He should have juggled a samurai sword or two instead.
He gave up at midnight and went to Shibuya to check out some smoking babes. One filled him with sake and then emptied his wallet. Well, she did leave his train pass.
A cloud of clove framed her ginger head. Few things I hate more than cigarettes, and she knows it. I was done.
“Vi—”
“O, la-di-dah!” she interrupted. “I have too many other things to worry about right now, Jimmy Lee, and your nagging’s like a pimple on the butt of my headache.”
Irritated, she leaned to stub out her cig in a bone china dish. Raw silk pulled taut around the swell of her hip, and my nether-sword sprung to sharp-edged attention.
Violet could have been smoking stanky cigars, and it would have made no difference to my cock.
Viola waited with Jimmy in line. The highly anticipated book signing of
Tune In Tokyo arrived! Anxious to receive the last one remaining, Viola noticed a woman smoking a thin cigarette. Dropping it, she carefully placed her red stiletto, squelching its dying embers. Sashaying by, the scent of cigarettes and expensive perfume rose.
“Thanks Tim,” cooed Ms. Reid taking the coveted book. Viola bit her lip.
“But-
“I’ve a reputation to uphold. I am, afterall, the shark! Should’ve entered my TIT contest.”
Her words cut like that of a razor edged sword. Jimmy eyed Viola’s boy like frame sighing.
“Are you really going to jimmy the lock with your sword?”
Viola cast Harry an ironic look, stuck the sword between the door and the frame and gave the hilt a solid kick.
There was a satisfying amount of splintering as the door swung open.
“So why couldn’t I just blow it up?”
“I don’t mind obvious, but I didn’t want them to see the smoking ruins from miles away either.”
Harry loved the fireworks much too much for Viola’s taste. She planned on being miles away on the day his enthusiasm got the better of him.
Jimmy stepped out of a Tokyo music hall and quickly lit a cigar. He had just endured a two-hour junior-high viola concert in his quest to eliminate his nemesis: Matsumoto, the Japanese crime boss who had been muscling in on his knock-off Hello Kitty trade. The screeching of a hundred out-of-tune violas had been unbearable.
"And no smoking. What the hell?"
But then, Jimmy smiled. He strolled over to a nearby black sedan and popped the trunk. A dead Matsumoto, framed by faux Kitty dolls, lay inside, a sword nestled in his breastbone.
"Now that," said Jimmy, "is an opus."
My cigar-smoking father disowned me when I fell for a musician, even though he played for the symphony and not a grunge band. Matt had found a way to jimmy the dead bolt of my heart and after his first kiss I left my father’s house and never looked back.
Until now.
“He can still hear you,” says the nurse stepping quietly from the room where my father, in a frame of hospital linens, lies sword-thin and struggling for breath.
Matt lifts his viola to his chin and plays a peaceful adagio. I hold my father’s hand and whisper goodbye.
Janet, do you know there's two Aprils in this contest?! I've only submitted one entry!
April, I check the link. If it's clearly two separate people, no worries.
“That’s one sweet jimmy.”
Viola sat smoking and admiring the mighty sword.
“You could hang a frame on it.”
Ok, thank you!
Jimmy was one frame short of an art gallery. Know what I mean? The type of French student that pronounced “voila” like “viola.” instead. The teacher couldn’t set him straight. He said it wrong anyhow. Yep. Not the sharpest sword in the dynasty.
Jimmy was arrested for a string of complicated thefts when cops found the stolen goods in his closet.
Couldn’t be him. He wasn’t smart enough for heists like those. What other conclusion could I come to when the proverbial “smoking gun” added up, in my estimation, to be nothing more than a leaky water pistol.
“Jimmy.”
Smoking will kill you, but not as quickly as a sword. Vanity. Violence. Viola. Vagabond. Sighing, I scratch V words into my notebook while Jimmy studies his emaciated frame.
“Jimmy Joe Jackson, let’s go!” I’ve no patience for souls who linger. J. Jerkin. Jackdaw.
“Who are you?”
I write Jackass before I answer, “Lucifer.”
Despite One’s protests to just boot the damn door already, Two continued to jimmy the lock.
“Where did you get this hairpin?” Two complained. “Things like trying to use a sword.”
“You see this, you know what this is?”
“The world’s tiniest violin playing the world’s saddest song?”
“Actually, it’s a viola and it ain’t playin’ shit because I died of old age already.”
Two felt the lock give.
“Bienvenu dans mon humble demeure…” he said gesturing to the shadows inside.
But One, One didn’t move. He just stood there in the door frame, smoking.
‘Enigma’
The viola’s frame lay smoking on velvet. My shifting feet crunched glass.
“I told you not to jimmy the display case,” my twin said.
Shiela always knew best. She set the curve in math, got picked first in gym, and was currently concert mistress while I turned pages two rows back.
As she reached for the enchanted instrument, electricity scorched her hands. “It’s a friggin’ viola. Who cares?”
It took to my shoulder like Arthur’s fabled sword to hand, “Ysobel’s” theme singing in my blood. I whispered so only the viola could hear, “You’re no second fiddle to me.”
It was her passion. She could not resist. The old viola sounded so much richer than any other. As she placed it back in the cedar vault, the strings were still smoling from the heat of her passionate playing. She used the sword from above the mantle to jimmy the hinges back in place. After she replaced the sword she adjusted the picture frame next to the vault.
When he came stomping up the steps she scurried back to the kitchen. As he closed the door with a slam, the picture frame slid and he smiled.
Pierre was sharpening his sword with care. His wife, Viola, was standing over the smoking fire, stirring the cauldron.
Ok people, lets get ready to shoot this! We're going to overcrank this at 72 frames per second. I want the movements to be steady and precise. Got that people?
Remember: I want pensive. I want pain. We have to feel your pain, Jimmy. Pierre is going to be beheading his Queen in a few hours. I want to feel the pain!
And Patsy, no weaving and bobbing in the background. Think wax figure.
Roll sound.
Turnover.
And action.
I moved the viola case and sat down.
"You know you can't query an unfinished book. The rejection will be smoking ugly. Publishing is a front door business. You can't jimmy the transom frame and slip through."
I didn't like that gleam in your eyes. It reminded me of the cupcake and sword incident.
"No, you don't understand. My novel won't end until it's published. Think of it as performance art."
I shrugged and watched you type.
Dear Ms. Reid:
"Ten literary agents have disappeared and no one has a clue why . . ."
As she lifted her viola, Maria tried to ignore the silhouette that appeared just inside her field of vision. The music regained her attention until the flare of a match illuminated Damon’s face.
The dissonance of a missed note startled her, and she squirmed in embarrassment at the mistake. The conductor wielded his baton like a sword as he tried to draw her back within the frame of the music.
Damon was smoking as he waited for her, and Maria knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to jimmy the lock to her apartment if she didn’t meet him after the concert.
Jimmy spent three days passing the intelligence exam, reporting to the U.S. intelligence building in Okinawa, Japan with a Swiss bank account containing one million dollars. He took one look at the top notch satellite imagery systems and made short work of changing his mind frame. He went from the testosterone induced, gorilla mentality of special investigations to the refined mentality of a desk job. Viola approached him, hand out, smoking a cigarette with the other. “Hi.”
“Hello.” He shook her hand. “People still smoke indoors?”
“Welcome. We are the tip of the sword--we have no rules.”
“Nuts and whipped cream?”
“Just jimmies.”
“Huh?”
I sighed. “Yeah, chocolate sprinkles? They’re called jimmies. Actually, just give me one single jimmy. Make the sundae look artsy like on Food Network or something.”
The clerk just grumbled and scooped, the freezer cold smoking in the open air. A nearby television played an old baseball game. Looked like the last one Frank Viola ever pitched. Soon I’d see the final frame he ever tossed, when his arm popped and flailed like his shoulder was chopped with a sword.
My sundae arrived and I dug in, savoring the last taste of summer.
Bartel made quite a show of his attempts to jimmy the warded lock. Libby gave him another minute — sensitive to the fact that he was trying to impress her — then pulled him back by his tunic and kicked the door from its frame with the heel of a steel-toed Doctor Martin’s industrial.
“Voila.”
She stepped inside the sword maker’s shop as plaster dust rose from the wound in the wall, bearing a comforting resemblance to the smoking barrel of a Glock G-17. She’d go olde school on the warlock’s ass until he returned her home. This medieval crap was exhausting.
I couldn't sleep.
The sleepover at Viola’s wasn’t going as planned.
We’d tried smoking some stolen Marlboro’s, huddled inside her mom’s Airstream trailer after using a paper clip to jimmy the lock.
And her cute brother had showed us his awesomely weird sword collection, touching my arm while showing me how to hold one.
Viola wasn’t my friend.
It was supposed to be a frame, a setup. I’d take humiliating pictures of her, post them on Facebook, ruin her life.
“Just go.” A whisper in the dark.
Viola.
“What?”
“I knew the plan all along.”
(Re-doing my entry!!):
It took forever to kill Jimmy. He talked and squawked like a crow on crack, his mouth moving 45mph. Tires screeched and conversations swirled in the thick, summer air around us. I listened to his rambling, all the while palming the sword behind my back, with sweaty hands. I envisioned the blood that would spurt out of his meager body. Red. Thick. Afterward, I would finish the Humidor cigar he was smoking. Rub the ashes on his forehead. Then I’d frame that stupid wife of his, Viola. Why? Because I can.
Cursed friggin' fraggin'adjacent vowels.
Voila! The word is viola.
Mutter mutter. Stomp stomp.
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